How They Shot the 1952 Helsinki Olympics

In their February 1953 issue Modern Photography had an interesting article on photographing this Olympics. There is a bit of Cold War drama going on.

 

 

Olympics 1 sm 2

This is part 2 of Modern's Enlarging articles.

 

 

Enlarging Part 2 1 sm 2

Try Color at Night.

 

 

Try Color at Night 1 sm 2

Why use a convertible lens?

 

 

Convertible Lens 1 sm 2

Here is the New Products column.

 

 

New Products 1 sm 2

The Behind the Scenes columns show Linhof is doing great.

 

 

BTS 1 sm 2

Here is What's Ahead with Lloyd Varden.

 

 

WA 1 sm 2

Popular Photography magazine had a photo essay on the polio story of a young girl.

 

 

Polio Story 1 sm 2

Here is their Tools and Techniques column.

 

 

T and T 1 sm 2

Here are this month's camera equipment ads.

 

 

Bolsey 1 sm 2

Here are this month's dealer ads.

 

 

Camera Corner 1 sm 2

Thanks again for posting these, Marc!

 

A nice piece on the Helsinki Olympics! I met a local athlete, many years ago, that competed in Helsinki. He had a lot of anecdotes. The article brought back memories.

 

RF types, Rolleiflexes and LF press cameras carried the day. I love that picture of the German photographer carrying a load of cameras.

 

The Cold War was indeed on; a lot of the article is about the Russians photographers and equipment. In Korea the war was for real. The Russians were under Stalin or Beria, not an easy time to get caught talking to Western photographers. No wonder they broke contact as soon as they noticed that they were being photographed.

 

We have now official confirmation that Kievs at that time were exactly like Contaxes!

 

In the ads, this was the time of Leica vs. Contax - but Canon was coming in.

In these times of sharing every little burp on the internet, it's fun to read how surprised the writer seems to be that the Russians had cameras produced in Russia that looked very similar to Western cameras. It's hard to image nowadays how little "we" knew about the life at the other side of the iron curtain (not that I was remotely born at the time of the Helsinki olympics, but the cold war lasted long enough).

I've always found Lloyd Varden a kind of an enigma.. On occasion he would really go off the rails, but other times seemed to be quite "stable".

 

Thanks.

This is great stuff. Some of those night photos are superior, or at least equal to, a lot of similar work that I see created today.

Great issue. Lots of history here that one can't get from a history book. Thanks for posting.

I wonder if the CIA read this article to get a clue in how advanced the Soviet Union was? They sure seemed surprised when the Soviets launched Sputnik.