Me And My Banier!

This is a photo of me, aged five, with my first Medium Format camera. It's a "Banier" - a clone of the "Diana", made by the Great Wall Plastic Factory in Hong Kong, and first sold in the early 60's for less than $3.00. The Diana is the darling of the lomography crowd, and it’s not entirely clear whether the Banier is a Diana clone or just an actual Diana under another name. But it's probably safe to assume that it’s an incarnation of the Diana, made in the same molds but sold in geographies where the manufacturer thought they'd get a better response to a different brand name. The Banier was a glorified box camera that shot 120 roll film and produced 4x4cm images, sixteen to a roll.

This photo was taken in East London by my father with his fantastic Kodak Retina IIIc, a camera that eventually accompanied me on a European tour in 1978-79. In fact, I still own the Retina, and may still have the Banier too. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in a box at my mother's place in Pretoria, South Africa. It was January 5, 1967 and I got the camera as a Christmas present a week or so earlier. It replaced the Kodak Box Brownie that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was three or four years old.

Behind me in this shot is my mother, sitting in our Volkswagen Type 3 "Notchback" 1500. We had driven down from Pretoria to Queenstown, where my father did some gliding before we moved on to King William's Town and East London. This image was captured on the waterfront in East London, Cape Province, South Africa on January 5, 1967.

This photo was taken two days later - January 7, 1967. I think it was at my paternal grandmother's home at 5 Crown Flats, 20 Eales Street, King William's Town, Cape Province, South Africa. This shot was also taken with my father's magnificent Kodak Retina IIIc.

Interestingly my gran, Caroline Catherine Pautz (nee Wright), was a photographic assistant at a studio in King William's Town for much of her working life, and this is no doubt the origin of my family's interest in photography.

Read this fantastic 2016 review of the Banier. I love his comment up front: "Spoiler alert: Unless you seriously want that junky, lo-fi, plastic crap camera experience, avoid these." :-)

Although it's clearly not the greatest camera in the world, my cheap plastic Banier was a gateway to a new world for me. It put technology in the hands of a young boy and planted the little creative seed that I still nurture to this day. Respect.

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©