Cherry Kearton's Prototype Rifle Camera c.1919

c.1919, handmade from 2mm thick sheet aluminum with brass screw work and a repurposed .22 rifle stock from an earlier iteration of this early naturalist rifle camera we see pictured on pg. 53 of 'Wild Nature Ways' 1903. Designed to make exposures of 2 1/2" X 3 1/2" on 120 medium format roll film, with a ground breaking automated spring-loaded film advance

The rifle trigger tensions the film plate against a horizontal focal plane cloth shutter, and when fully returned, advances the film via a spring-loaded mechanism driving the left film spool. This innovation was patented by Kearton in 1919 for a wider range of cameras, however initially, it was an innovation developed for cinematograph and stereoscopic cameras during the First World War c.1915. The advance mechanism is wound from the base of the camera body, with a brass knob controlling the speeds on the right side. There are film adjustment knobs next to the spring winder.

Focussing is controlled by a vertically mounted forward grip. Unfortunately the camera is missing a lens head in order to take photographs, however the 2" flange diameter would fit a number of telephoto lens heads. Mr Kearton's personal manuscripts mention 'that brilliant lens maker Dallmeyer's telephotos lenses' so presumably this was his personal preference. He mentions in his biography he was the first to use 8" Dallmeyer telephoto lenses for nature photography. The camera's viewfinder, is repurposed from a Dallmeyer Naturalist camera, a camera Kearton can be seen in use in a published photograph from May 1935 in a Scottish Lake, photographing the last pair of Ospreys in Great Britain.

The design of this Gun camera appears to take inspiration from Gun camera's of the 19th century such as the Hunter Sands Photographic Gun. A previous iteration of this camera that takes plates and has bellows, we see Kearton photographing with in 'Wild Nature Ways' 1903. It improves on this mahogany and brass camera which had bellows, by employing a more robust design with automated winding functionality, twenty years before this was popularised with German Robot 35mm cameras.

Kearton's nephew writes in a manuscript offered elsewhere in the archive the following; 'In many ways, Cherry Kearton was of an inventive turn of mind and took out patents for numerous improvements for cinematograph camera's, amongst which was an early form of camera gun, in fact i believe it was the first of it's kind.' The camera predates the famous Leitz NY Rifle 35mm Camera and is a very early, entirely unique, spring driven 120 rifle camera. A unique and important opportunity in terms of British photographic history, Naturalism and the story of camera developments at the turn of the last century.

Provenance: From the estate of Cherry Kearton.

Brothers Cherry (1871-1940) and Richard Kearton (1862-1928) were a pair of British naturalists and are often considered the world’s first professional wildlife photographers.

They were born in the village of Thwaite, East Riding of Yorkshire. Their father John was a yeoman farmer and the boys spent much of their youth surrounded by animals and nature.

Cherry went on to specialise in animal photography and is credited with taking the first recorded photograph of a bird’s nest with eggs in 1892. In 1895, the brothers published the first ever natural history book entirely illustrated with photographs taken in the wild. The following year, they ventured to the Outer Hebridean island of St. Kilda, recording the wildlife of its most remote areas. 1898 saw the publication of one of their most famous works, With Nature and a Camera, featuring 160 original shots.

Cherry contributed photographs to seventeen of Richard’s books, writing and illustrating a further seventeen of his own. He made the first phonograph recording of birds singing in the wild in 1900 (a nightingale and song thrush), took the first aerial images of London whilst flying with the Spencer Brothers in 1908, and recorded the earliest footage of WWI (a conflict in which he served).

Further to his iconic photographs, Cherry is remembered as an important inventor and early aviator. Alongside his brother, he developed naturalistic photography hides including the stuffed sheep and hollow ox, displaying the lengths to which they’d go to get the perfect shot. His innovative camera patents, including the rifle camera seen in this auction, are credited with helping the war effort.

To this day, the Royal Geographical Society presents the Cherry Kearton Award, a medal presented to any ‘traveller concerned with the study or practice of natural history, with a preference for those with an interest in nature photography, art or cinematography’. The legacy of Kearton is enduring. Indeed, the now world-famous veteran of wildlife television, Sir David Attenborough, was eight years old in 1934 when he saw his first natural history film. This featured the pioneering Cherry Kearton, with Attenborough going on to say,

“Kearton’s films captured my childish imagination… It made me dream of travelling to far-off places to film wild animals.”

(From publicity in Nature for Attenborough’s Life Stories, BBC Radio 4, 2009)

The collection offered (lots 66 to 95) comes from the estate of Cherry Kearton. It features an important prototype rifle camera (lot 66), a selection of original photographs (including two with a letter from personal friend, Theodore Roosevelt, lot 69), his WWI service medal group (lot 87), and a selection of related objects detailing the life of this most important naturalist, photographer and inventor.