Gillespie's Museum of Photography

As I was growing up, my grandma used to save everything. When she passed away, it took weeks for us to clean out her home. It was like going through a museum, only things were not kept in any kind of order, just piles of stuff in different rooms. Some rooms you could just barely get into. She had been in the home since before I was born and there was decades of stuff. I think some of her has rubbed off on me, at least when it comes to camera gear.

Looking through my house is like looking through a personal museum of my years as a photographer. Some stuff I will display, like my first film camera and my first digital camera. If you are wondering they are a Minolta Maxxum 7000, circa 1985, and a Kodak DCS 520, circa 1999. I have read the Minolta was the first real auto-focus camera. I bought it used for $175.00 in 1991 for my 21st birthday. The DCS 520 was a state of the art digital camera in 1999, and I basked in all of its 2 mega-pixel glory for a few years. I had to wait until 2000 to buy it because it was over $14,000 in 1999. I picked it up for a song at $7,100 the following year.

Eventually the Maxxum 7000 was replaced by a Maxxum 9000 and the DCS 520 was replaced by a Canon 10D, but both cameras served me well and have a place in my museum.

Some stuff, on the other hand, I just have not been able to bring myself to get rid of. As we work our way into the bowels of my museum, which many would call the basement, you come across a collection of pieces from the D.E. or Darkroom Era. There is my Besseler 23c Enlarger with color head. Boxes full of other old darkroom stuff like easels, trays and books on darkroom technique. Random tongs are packed away, hoping that this digital thing is just a fad.

Then there is the pelican case with my once cherished medium format Bronica ETRS camera system. This was my pride and joy when I thought that I was going to be a commercial photographer. Sure, it is not a Hasselblad, but it is a decent camera, cost me a lot of money and made some killer images on two trips to Europe. I also think it may have helped me land my first assisting job with my former mentor, who also used the same system. Alas, now it has been relegated to the basement museum.

Sure, I could have and should have sold this stuff on eBay years ago. I actually did sell a Jobo film processor in 2001 for almost what I paid for it, but those days are long over. It would now most likely cost more to ship it than I would get for selling it. And you never know, film might make a comeback.


What is in your photographic museum?