I Wonder Whatever Happened To Jill?

I first met Jill at a Greynold's Park Love-In in the late 1960's. She was truely a miniature woman, about 4 foot 9 and 80 pounds at best, good looking and she knew it!

She grew up on Miami Beach and eventually got married, changing her name from Aberman to Carpenter, hardly a Jewish name, and had a son. I guess that he'd be in his late twenties by now. Jill and I used to run into one another frequently for many years and then one day I realized that I hadn't heard from her in months. I asked around but never did find out what happened to her. I guess that was back in the early 1980's.

This shot was for no better reason than to try out a "new" Polaroid camera. Polaroid had made first a Model 110 with a quality Wollensack lens and coupled rangefinder, following that up with the 110B which had a fantastic Rodenstock lens, but they were both designed for the original Polaroid roll film. They wouldn't accept the new pack films. It was getting difficult to find the roll film, and a lot of us used to like to shoot a Polaroid test shot to check the lighting in studio shots.

Somebody came up with the idea of taking a Polaroid pack back made for a 4x5 view camera, a hacksaw, and some epoxy. With an hour or two's work the 110B would take Polaroid film packs! I located a 110B at a thrift shop for next to nothing, bought the back at Browne's Photo Center, did a bit of sawing and glueing, adjusted the front standard to move the lens back a few millimeters, and ran into Jill. That solved my model problem. I wasn't testing the lighting, I was testing the camera. It worked! I still have it. Now I read that Polaroid is stopping production of all their films. Who needs instant pictures when you have a digital camera, right? I hope that Fuji starts importing their version of instant film. A lot of other people do also.

And that table that Jill is standing on? It's an old treadle Singer sewing machine from near the turn of the last century.