The Graflex camera - history

The iconic Speed Graphic is associated with an era of press photography through the 1930s to 60s. Gangster movies of the times depict cigar chomping members of the Fourth Estate in suits and Fedoras wielding large hand held plate cameras fitted with crackling and brilliantly explosive flash bulbs; scenes often played out on the steps of a courthouse or behind the police lines of a gruesome murder.

While many other large format cameras were in use at this time, it is the images of early Graflex, Century Graphic, Pacemaker Speed Graphic, Combat Graphic and Super Speed Graphic which captured public imagination. Arguably, the most famous photograph ever made in the 20th Century with a Graflex is the late Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's World War II image of United States Marines raising the Stars and Stripes flag on Mount Suribachi in 1945 on the island of Iwo Jima. It won a Pulitzer Prize for its author and inspired a national war-bond poster, a postage stamp and a bronze statue in Washington D.C.

A partnership between William F. Folmer and William E. Schwing made in 1887, was responsible for the long line of cameras which became an American photographic institution. Incorporated in 1890 as the Folmer & Schwing Manufacturing Co., the firm began making cameras in 1897. In 1905 the company was bought by George Eastman of Rochester and by 1917 was a division of Eastman Kodak. The company underwent more name changes before becoming Graflex Inc., in 1945. From 1956 until 1968 Graflex was owned by General Precision Equipment Corp and afterwards by the Singer Corporation.

The flood of small format Japanese cameras imported into the U.S.A. in the 1950s and 1960s gradually eroded the company's customer base and by 1973 Graflex had ceased large format press and field camera production. The last American produced 4" X 5" camera carried the name Super Speed Graphic. It was built with an all metal body and fitted with a coupled rangefinder, Graflex shutter, revolving universal back, double extension bellows and all directional movements on the front standard.

But the Speed Graphic story did not end then. In 1982, all the dies, designs and patents for the camera were purchased by the Sakai Special Camera Mfg Co Ltd of Osaka, Japan, makers of the Toyo range of field and studio cameras. The company put the camera back into production as the Toyo Super Graphic and fitted it with a National made Toyo Graphic Autolight 56E with an extra long handle. The Camera was imported to the UK by photographic distributors George Elliot & Son.