Oscar Bailey with his Cirkuit Camera Penland NC 1980
Oscar Bailey was one of many great teachers on my road to imaging. He happened to be the first photography professor I had when I was first learning the camera.
Oscar was the first to open my eyes to photography, the related arts and to many great photographers. He also promoted the idea of play into his teachings.
His teaching altered my perspective and sparked a new direction for my artistic goals. For myself and many others, his classes were a new beginning. It helped us in deciding what we were going to be when we all grew up.
Here he is with his ancient “Cirkuit Camera”. Using this magnificent device, he would often shoot large group panoramas where he and others would be recorded in the image more than once. As the camera spun in one direction, he would rush to a new location and wait for the camera to catch up. He also shot some pretty incredible landscapes with this same rig.
Spelled with a k, Cirkuit Cameras were one of the predecessors to modern panoramic cameras. The Cirkuit camera was mounted on a gear system that allowed the camera to rotate around its own axis. The camera rotated in a circular fashion while the film moved through the camera in the opposite direction. The exposure was produced through an open slit located in the light path of the lens, which worked as a moving shutter. Each new portion of the scene was recorded onto the moving film as it passed the subject scene. The end result was usually a 360˚ panorama. They could also be used to produce partial panoramas.
Oscar was a great teacher who knew many of the photographic greats such as Lee Friedlander, Robert Rauschenberg, Jerry Uelsmann, Garry Winogrand and many others. He was also one of the founding members of the Society for Photographic Education, which is better known as SPE.
There isn’t as much as there should be on the Internet about him. FB and social media was before his time. However, I haven’t met anyone on the web that I value more than Oscar Bailey. Somehow, I don’t think I would be the same photographer, or even the same person if I hadn’t been his student. As he did with many others, he pushed me into the light.
You can never forget a great teacher. They become a part of who you are.
I learned that Oscar passed away a few years back. It would have been great to see him again.
Joseph Bellows Gallery – Oscar Bailey – Biography
News and Events / Remembering Oscar Wilson Bailey’ | Society for …
