Two New Jersey photographers have paid homage to their hometown by going to great lengths to recreate a historic photo using the same rotating panoramic camera the original photographers used all the way back in 1910.
Christian Fielder and Marshall Roshto tell PetaPixel they like to take on creative projects together and after seeing the original photo of Morristown Green plastered around town, the pair decided to research it and eventually recreate it.
Cirkut Cameras
The original photo is credited to the Parker Brothers, who ran a sophisticated studio in Morristown from 1898 through to the 1940s. It shows a 180-degree view of the town’s newly-completed central square in stunning detail.
Fielder and Roshto tracked down the original contact print at their local library’s North Jersey History Center and verified that the original negative was several feet wide and eight inches tall.
“The only camera capable of creating an image like this at that time was a Cirkut No.8,” Fielder says.
“Marshall and I then put our heads together to figure out how we could recreate the 1910 panorama. We considered stitching several large-format images together, but this was less than ideal since there would be a bit of distortion when stitching standard photos together along a curved scene.
“We also considered swing-lens cameras like the Horizon or vintage Panoram cameras, but the original perspective required something that could capture more than 180 degrees. Eventually we landed on procuring a Cirkut camera just like the original.”
Cirkut cameras are not only very niche but also very difficult to get hold of. The duo bought several non-functional models from eBay. Luckily, Roshto is an engineer by trade and he was able to get them working. Cirkut cameras are completely mechanical and work like old clocks with wind-up motors, gears, and a speed governor.
“Marshall was able to disassemble, clean, and tune until we had a really smooth panning Cirkut camera,” says Fielder.
A working rotating camera is one thing, but what about procuring the seven-foot-long film?
“The film is long out of production,” explains Fielder. “Kodak used to make spools regularly, and Ilford will occasionally do an ultra large-format custom run, but we had access to neither.”
Fielder spoke to online Cirkut expert Skyy, who makes custom rolls and sold Fielder and Roshto a few of them.
“For development, we cloned Drew Tanner’s setup, which was large but worked well,” says Fielder.
“This was our first time doing darkroom work, but if you’re going to get into home development, this seemed like a heck of a debut.”
Plenty has changed in Morristown in the intervening century, including the balcony the Parker Brothers used to shoot the original photo on. Fielder and Roshto applied for a permit to erect a scaffold on the sidewalk to match the 1910 perspective.
Their work has been received positively and the local library, where the pair first saw the original photo, now proudly displays their image side-by-side for comparison. It’s culminated in a show called Morristown: In Focus that visitors will be able to see through the spring.
Image credits: Photographs by Christian Fielder and Marshall Roshto.
