1950 Kodak Duaflex camera by Kodak
Text/Photography by Bruce Berman
The Kodak Duaflex is a 620 roll film pseudo TLR made by Kodak in the US, Canada, and UK. The original versions were available from December 1947 – September 1950 in the US, and 1949-1955 in the UK; the Duaflex IV was finally discontinued in the US in March 1960.
It was real.
If film is still made it will shoot. It feels good in the hand and the eye.
It is not plastic.
If you shoot with it and make a black and white print on fiber-based paper (and wash it properly), there is every likelihood the print will last a couple of hundred years or more.
Can anyone say that about any digital camera? Plastic. It’s capture is on a plastic encased memory card and is not archival, and will not last. Prints? Archival? Ridiculous claim. Not archival. Ink jet prints? Totally impermanent.
We’re living in a time of impermanent documentation praying (insert irony) somehow “the cloud,” will always be there.
What is “always” there?
An era of Junk.
What to do?
No one knows. Back up your backup hard drives until there is no one who cares anymore and doesn’t back them up?
Then there’s the Duraflex. Real. Capable of working for a very long time (no batteries no plastic.
The “real” is permanent.
The ephemeral is… well… ephemeral.
We love what’s real.