My name is Simon Simonsen, and I was born in 1960 in Holbaek, Denmark. It was almost at that time my father decided to buy his Bauer 88B 8mm moviecamera with Schneider-Kreuznach optics, and with this beautiful hammertone laquered light blue-greenish finished camera, he documented my entire childhood on endless rolls of film. The Bauer is still on my shelf. 

It was in the summer of ‘69 that my father gave me my very first camera. It was a black and blue Diana made entirely of plastic, and he got it in the local toy store. It was actually capable of taking rather nice pictures (on 120 rollfilm of course), but my father was somewhat of a cheapskin, so he rarely gave me any film. Being the bright 9-year-old I was, I just continued to shoot without film in the camera, and just tried to remember the imaginary pictures in my mind.  

Then followed some nameless Agfa’s and Instamatics, which I can’t really remember. Only the typical teen-silly pics in my album remind me of those years.  The real turningpoint was my confirmation where I got enough cash as presents from my family, and finally I was able to buy a decent camera. My father tried to convince me to buy a secondhand Rolleiflex, but, oh no, I wouldn’t listen. In stead i got a brand new Petri FTee, which followed me for quite some years. The only extra lens i could afford was a M42 135 mm Prinz Galaxy and an adaptor ring. Of course I should have listened to my father. But on the otherhand the Petri served me well.  

Slowly I began making some money out of my photography, and at the age of 15 I was working as a part time freelance photographer, and selling quite a few photographs to 2 local newspapers. Those were the days when no proffesional press photographer would even consider using anything else than a Nikon F photomic. I often got the bad eye when flashing my Petri and a Praktica that I had borrowed. However my fee was the same and the photograhs were just as good as the ones delivered by the “Nikon mob”.  One summersday I covered a footballmatch, sitting on a small stool left of the goal. A player missed a penalty shot and the goal totally, and i remember that i saw the ball through the Praktica viewfinder before it hit the camera head on with full force, throwing me 2 metres backwards with a broken nose. The Praktica ?. Not a scratch of course ! . That impressed the "Nikon mob" quite a lot.

Around 1976 I met my first mentor, a proffesional photographer, who for some reason took me under his wings and taught me everything about the tricks of the trade. Fritz Meldgaard was a middle-aged, short and chubby man, who always (and I mean it literally) carried an army canvas shoulderbag containing the things he treasured most of all in life; 2 strong Danish Elephant beers in glass bottles, his Leica IIIf and a couple of lenses. When going out on an assignment that required more equipment, he threw it all into a red plastic shopping basket. Once in a while he needed to get away on short breaks, and he usually just threw me the keys to the studio and darkroom and said; “You can manage kid, no problem,” and just left.  Later he would call me and ask me to substitute him as teacher on a photo course for youths, and i suspect that the Elephant beers had something to do with this. Apart from his total lack of respect for his equipment, he knew everything about photography, and he had inherited his studio from his father, who had established his business at the turn of the century. To this day I am so very grateful for everything Fritz gave and shared (which did not include his beers), and to this day he remains a great inspiration, all though he passed away many years ago. Thanks Fritz!.  

Of course I had to go astray, and I have had some very unhappy love affairs with i.e. Olympus OM10, Nikon EM, and a Contax 137, but that all ended, and I sold them off when I found a banged up Rolleicord around the year 1980. I still have this camera, and it still works perfectly and hasn’t been CLA’ed for 25 years! The second important milestone was a beautiful Arette Ia, which I used for many, many years as a street shooter. God, how i loved that camera! The Isco triplet lens delivered such wonderful pictures, and this is the only camera I’ve owned that I have totally worn out, and after many years of use and abuse it literally fell apart. Unfortunately I don't have anything left of my work from back then. The sad thing is, that all my work, all negatives and notes were lost in a devastating fire in the building where I had my darkroom and studio. That was somewhat of a chock to me, and i simply gave it all up. 

For the next 25 years I would hardly take any pictures at all except for an ocassional roll of film with the Rolleicord. I spent my years in the Royal Danish Navy, and afterwards I followed different careers and oportunities that had absolute nothing to do with photography. The change came in 2004, where I suffered from several heartattacks, and for reasons mentioned elsewhere on this site I established my humble collection, and my love affairs with my German ladies began.