Tumblr Blog Features Photos of Celebrities and Their Cameras
posted Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 9:46 AM EDT
Arriving at the Celebrity Camera Club Tumblr blog full of anticipation of seeing Flavor Flav or the Octomom with a Canon 5D Mark II, I was badly let down. The celebrities in this gallery of the would-be and the almost famous and their cameras are for the most part folks from the past. The talented and not so talented, holding film cameras, all supposedly caught in the act of shooting pictures. I am using the term “shooting” rather loosely.
Although a few of the stars and starlets of yesteryear may have actually taken photographs, in many cases these images feel contrived. It is as though a photographer, desperate to get some sort of human response from these people, handed them a camera to play with, to get them to loosen up. On occasion, it works. However, there are a few pictures in the collection of celebrities who actually have established themselves as photographers, actors like Jeff Bridges and Leonard Nimoy and the pony-tailed fashionista, Karl Lagerfeld.
A better title for this site would have been, perhaps, The Old Camera and Celebrity Club, because the images truly provide a walk down film camera memory lane. Stroll through these images and it seems that the twin lens Rolleiflex was widely beloved as were various models of the then trendy Polaroid.
There are a few stars whose faces are immediately recognizable. There is Sir Mick Jagger photographed at different stages in his career looking for satisfaction with any number of cameras. Sadly, there is one recent shot of Sir Mick using an iPhone 4 that shows the Jumping Jack Flash a lot worse for wear. Street Fighting Man’s iPhone is one of the few digital devices to be a member of the club. One other I found was a Canon DSLR, held in the hands of U.S. President Barack Obama who is squinting awkwardly into its viewfinder.
Best of all, for me, is a photo of a young woman at the beach, pretending to take photographs with a Leica IIIF that probably belonged to her dad. It is the actress/singer Brigitte Bardot, photographed at the Cannes Film Festival in the 1950s. She is wearing one of the first bikinis; a risqué swimsuit named for the Pacific atoll where atomic bombs were tested and which, by today’s standards looks absolutely sweet and innocent.
The Celebrity Camera Club turns out to be a window into a much simpler past and that may be its own best claim to fame.
To see more go to http://celebritycameraclub.tumblr.com
(Via Fstoppers)
