Ray Parker Sr., circa 1959

Sixty-years-ago, in our living room in the English housing estate we called home, Dad taught me how to use a camera — how to focus the lens, how to press a bulb into the flash gun, how to cock the shutter, and where the shutter-release button lay. Learning to hold the camera level would take a while longer.

He took a seat on the sofa and posed for what would be the first of hundreds of portraits I’d make of him over the years, informally and for promotional materials related to his life as an entertainer.

When my family moved from England to Canada, in 1965, the household goods that were liquidated beforehand included my dad’s archive of glass plate negatives. Though plastic roll film was widely available by the 1950s, Dad continued to use his glass plate camera into the ’60s. Glass plates, in this case gelatin dry plates, had the advantage of presenting a consistently flat surface to the image projected by the camera lens.

I remember a heavy suitcase full of the fragile black and white plates sitting in the garage, awaiting its trip to the dump. I held some of them up to the light, fascinated by the fine, three-dimensional detail of the reversal images. Oh, how I wish I had those treasures now! I’d surely scan them, perhaps dedicate a gallery here.* I have no idea what happened to the camera, but I do still have the Hanimex Sekonic Light Meter Dad used during that time.

A few prints survive, including this gem that represents my first photo, ever. Shortly after, I received my own camera as a birthday present, a Kodak Brownie.

As I’ve noted in my bio, I first experienced the fascinating art of photography in Dad’s attic darkroom, where this print was likely made. I can’t recall the make of his camera. I do know that its lens, (a Schneider-Kreuznach, I believe) once the film plates were exposed, was then pressed into service for enlargement. Dad made the enlarger from a large tin can, cutting a hole in the bottom to fit the lens and installing a light bulb fixture in the top opening. There must have been some kind of height adjustment rail to make different size prints (original photo right = 3.5″ x 5.5″). The whole thing was typical of Dad’s DIY dexterity.

The greatest thrill for me was watching the chemistry perform its magic in the developing tray, as the latent image appeared on the paper. That’s something I still miss, sitting in front of this computer in these digital days. But here we have it — transformed into oughts and ones, decoded and projected through glass once more — the image and the man that launched my life in photography.

*The news photo of The Parker Brothers heading the memorial gallery post was scanned from a glass plate negative.