To the best of my knowledge, this is a Kodak Vigilant in one of it's incarnations.
This belonged to my father. It still almost works. It's aperture blades are sticking. Not a huge repair that I will one day get around to doing. It needs seals and it needs 620 film.
It sits on a desk for this photograph. That's an Angry Bird ashtray on the left. The desk belonged to my grandfather. I remember him sitting at it writing letters and doing calculations on a calculator. These are fond memories and I am so happy that I have the desk in my home now for me to sit at and write letters and to reminisce at.
The Kodak usually sits atop our camera display cum drinks cabinet. It is the only camera there that I do not regularly use and that doesn't work - a creator of memories has become a memory itself. A momento. A display piece. A curiosity.
Like I said, I will fix it and use it soon. I already have a project that it is perfect, and destined, for. That giant negative will be a thing of beauty.
Sadly, my father does not have any photographs that he shot with this Kodak. They have fallen into the vast well of time.
I love how beautiful an object this Kodak is. I love how it is an old non-working camera that can be fixed and used. It has been to war. It now is witness to many a White Russian.
Tomorrow, who knows what it will see and what it will create?
