Graflex

Graflex — history

Graflex began before it had that name, in the busy overlap between bicycles, metalwork, lighting fixtures and photography in late nineteenth-century New York. William F. Folmer and William E. Schwing entered partnership in 1887 and incorporated their manufacturing company in 1890. Cameras gradually displaced the earlier trades. By the mid-1890s the firm was offering its own Graphic cameras, and the 1898 catalog shows a confident photographic house: folding Graphic and Graphic Senior models, a compact Cycle Graphic for photographers on the move, stereoscopic cameras, shutters, plates and lenses from both house and outside makers. These were practical objects for a plate-camera world, built around bellows extension, rising fronts, removable holders and the expectation that a photographer might choose among several lenses. This was not yet the press-camera company remembered today, but the essential habits were present - compact construction, professional flexibility and a willingness to build a system around the photographer's work.

William Folmer's most consequential invention took the company in another direction. His early Graflex joined a mirror and hooded focusing screen to a focal-plane shutter, allowing a photographer to view and focus through the taking lens before exposure. Kingslake places the first experimental camera in 1898 and describes an important refinement in 1904: a complicated variable opening gave way to a cloth curtain carrying several fixed-width apertures. The photographer chose an aperture and spring tension to set the exposure. It was direct, rugged and serviceable, and versions of that mechanism remained in production for decades. The 1906 catalog already presents Auto Graflex, Revolving Back Auto Graflex, Stereo Auto Graflex and Junior models as a family rather than a single novelty.

George Eastman purchased Folmer & Schwing in 1905 and moved the operation to Rochester. Under Kodak ownership it became a specialist professional-camera organization, eventually joined with Century's camera work. That union added the Cirkut panoramic line and helped place field, reflex, panoramic and studio equipment under one roof. William Folmer stayed as general manager through 1926. The 1920 catalog catches the shop at full breadth: Auto and Revolving Back Graflex cameras, compact roll-film reflex models, Graphic field cameras, Speed Graphics and Cirkut cameras capable of sweeping long panoramas across rolls of film. Kodak ownership supplied industrial scale, but the products retained a recognizable Folmer & Schwing identity.

The large-format Graflex reflex camera became a system in its own right. Auto, Revolving Back, Press, Naturalist, Series B, Series C, Series D, Home Portrait and later Super D models served news, portrait, scientific and sports work in formats from compact roll film to 5 x 7 plates. Their appeal was wonderfully literal: the photographer saw a large image formed by the taking lens, sheltered by the viewing hood, and could watch expression, motion and focus up to the instant the mirror rose. Different backs and lensboards prevent casual interchangeability across the whole family, yet the common architecture gave Graflex a visual identity as strong as any badge.

The Speed Graphic, introduced in 1912, turned the company's shutter expertise into a different kind of working camera. Instead of reflex viewing, it folded a front standard and bellows into a box with a bed, viewfinder and ground glass. Its body-mounted focal-plane shutter could handle barrel lenses, while shutter-mounted lenses provided another route to exposure. Top-handle cameras gave way to larger lensboards, side handles and the Pre-Anniversary generation; the Anniversary model arrived around 1940 with linked bed and body tracks and other practical refinements. Format mattered throughout: 2 1/4 x 3 1/4, 3 1/4 x 4 1/4, 4 x 5 and 5 x 7 cameras were related tools, not one interchangeable object.

Kodak's professional-camera division was separated in the 1920s, and the Folmer Graflex Corporation took over the operation. Independence did not erase continuity. The Rochester factory kept building the same interlocking Graflex and Graphic traditions while developing National Graflex roll-film SLRs, Crown and Graphic View cameras, military equipment and revised press cameras. The Depression sharply reduced employment, but wartime and news work renewed demand. The Smithsonian describes Graflex press cameras as preferred tools of photojournalists and correspondents, including military photographers. Their combination of strength, repairability, large negatives and flexible focusing made them especially suited to assignments where a missed frame mattered.

Working photographs give that reputation a human scale. William P. Gottlieb used a 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Speed Graphic for much of his celebrated jazz work. Film holders gave him only two exposures before the holder had to be reversed and reloaded, so timing and preparation were inseparable from the camera. The familiar flash-equipped Graphic was never effortless, but its slowness could sharpen attention. Wartime Anniversary and Combat configurations, postwar Pacemakers and the Super D reflex all grew from the same conviction that a professional camera should let its user see precisely, set controls deliberately and keep working under pressure.

After the war, Graflex refined rather than abandoned the folding press camera. Pacemaker Speed and Crown Graphics added coated lens options, body release, folding infinity stops and Graflok backs. The Crown omitted the body focal-plane shutter, saving weight and allowing shorter wide-angle lenses; the Speed retained it for barrel lenses and high shutter speeds. The Century Graphic brought the same bed-camera logic to a smaller format. Super Graphic and Super Speed Graphic models added a revolving back, built-in rangefinder and electrical features. Alongside them, Crown View, Graphic View and Graphic View II gave architectural, industrial and studio photographers generous camera movements on wooden field and metal monorail designs.

Graflex also tested a wider market. Its acquisition of Ciro brought Ciro-flex twin-lens reflex and Ciro 35 cameras into the catalog, followed by the Graflex 22, Graphic 35, Century 35, Stereo Graphic and 70mm Graphic 70. These products complicate the simple picture of one Rochester factory making everything that carried the badge. Some were acquired designs or imported cameras, and their lenses require model-by-model attribution. The same caution applies to Graflex-branded Optar, Tele-Optar and Graftar lenses: catalogs establish how they were sold and fitted, but branding alone does not prove who designed or ground every optical generation.

General Precision Equipment acquired Graflex in 1956, and the company moved to a new plant near Pittsford the following year. The late catalogs still show Crown, Speed, Century and Super Graphics as professional workhorses, now surrounded by roll holders, electronic flash and a broad menu of supplier lenses. In the XL, introduced in the mid-1960s, Graflex made its boldest break with the folding bed. Three modular bodies accepted interchangeable backs and dedicated focusing-barrel lenses. Zeiss, Schneider and Rodenstock supplied optics from a 47mm Super-Angulon to a 270mm Rotelar, while the special thin body made genuine super-wide work possible.

Singer ownership began in 1968 and carried the camera line to its close in 1973. Tooling went to Toyo, but the original Graflex company did not continue as a camera manufacturer. Its legacy is broader than the Speed Graphic silhouette. It reaches from the New York Graphic cameras and Folmer's great reflex-shutter idea through Cirkut panoramas, Series and Super D reflexes, the press cameras used by news and military photographers, flexible Graphic Views and the modular XL. Across nearly eight decades, the enduring thread was the working camera: an instrument made to be focused, adjusted, repaired and trusted when the photograph could not be repeated.