John Orolin is standing in his comfortable basement office gazing fondly at 300 cameras. “I’m not to the point where I’m obsessed,” he insists.
Orolin might not be technically obsessed, but it’s safe to say he’s an enthusiastic collector…and not just of cameras. He also has a small (18) collection of grandfather clocks, one of which dates back to 1685. He still owns every computer he ever bought. He collects old farm equipment and tools and has a drawer full of old calculators he’s accumulated over the years. “I don’t collect matchbooks. You collect things that you enjoy. I’ve always been good at working with my hands, so I guess that’s why I collect the things I collect.”
The collector, who retired in 1995 from a 35-year career teaching at military bases in Turkey, Spain, England and Holland, also raced sports cars and dabbled in archeology. “It’s been a great life,” he says.
But it’s cameras that really get his attention. He belongs to a camera club in Hendersonville, one in Brevard and one more in Asheville. “Too many camera clubs,” is how he characterizes the situation.
It started in 1949 when he borrowed his Uncle George’s Kodak Bantam 828 and joined his high school camera club. That camera is still with him, occupying an honored spot in his collection.
“Of course,” he says, “by the end of the year, I had to have a better camera…always had to have a better camera. Back in 1950, I paid $70 for an Argus C3. What does that equate to today? I don’t know where I got the money. For the life of me, I can’t remember.”
Later on, he graduated to a large format Speed Graphic, a camera that went with him to college where he quickly found himself among kindred souls. “My mentor in college,” he recalls, “was the head of the publicity department. His name was Nelson Smith…a wonderful guy, a photographer his whole life. I learned everything from Nelson.”
Under Smith’s tutelage, Orolin blossomed as a photographer. “Back in the late ‘50s,” he says, “photography was not considered an art form, not at all.” So, when his friends urged him to have a show of his work, it was a hard sell. “The only place to show my work was the gallery in the art department, so I talked with the head of the art department. I took him about a dozen images. He sort of reluctantly told me I could have the show. It took place in the summer of 1960 and it went over very well. It was a wonderful experience.”
Orolin has always been most comfortable with photography as an art form. “I’ve never been a portrait man,” he says. “Of course, having a 4x5 Speed Graphic at the university in the early ‘60s was kind of a chick magnet. I worked for the yearbook and the publicity department and the newspaper, so I took some portraits.”
Photography has changed a lot since he picked up his uncle’s Kodak that first time, and Orolin welcomes the change—for the convenience, if for no other reason. “The equipment we carried around then weighed 40 or 50 pounds. And you were on your feet all the time. It takes a lot out of you when you do that for 60 years.”
He seldom hunts the swap meets and garage sales for cameras to add to his collection. However, he does keep up-to-date equipment in his own camera bag. “I keep a camera for about two years and then I have to have a new one,” he says. “The fact is that there really wasn’t any significant technological advance from the ‘40s to the ‘70s and ‘80s. For about 30 years, photography was kind of stagnant in that respect.”
Things are different now, he points out, with technology changing the world of photography almost as rapidly as it transforms the computer industry. “It’s not as difficult to take a good sports photograph,” he says for an example. “You almost can’t miss. In the old Speed Graphic days, you had one shot.” His current camera is a Sony that boasts 12 megapixels, a measure of performance that was undreamed of just a few years ago.
These days, although he’s still competing in camera shows, he confines his photography to the level of a hobby. “I don’t make money at it,” he explains. “I just try to pay for my hobby. I’m going to put together a book this year. It’s going to be called 60 Years Behind the Lens.”
It’s a fitting name for the memoirs of a man who’s lived through the golden age of photography and has kept his enthusiasm for it intact. And maybe that’s the foundation of his passion for collecting.
“The older you get,” he says, “the more you want to hang onto time.”
