Diary | Michele Annunziata

date » 30-07-2026 11:00

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tags » foto lampo agency potenza, studio foto lampo, rocco abriola foto lampo, street photography, camera g 690 bl fujica, onceas based in milan importer and official warranty fujica for Italy, z' gerard' crisci potenza, thumberwald,

The License (and that's two).

The memories of a photographic studio and also photojournalism agency (Foto-Lampo) lived from the inside hold this extraordinary value: they bring back the raw material, the weight, and the grain of an era with the precision of someone who actually handled the negatives.
And it comes full circle when looking at that vintage advertisement with the round seal at the bottom right: ONCEAS, the Milanese importer with its official warranty for Italy, and the Fujica G690 BL presented as "The camera worth two"....continue...

The ad built its whole pitch on that: eliminating the ultimate flaw of large format by combining the speed of use and thumb-lever advance typical of a 35 mm with the devastating power of the 6x9 frame. On that page, the lenses that gave it shape are:
The Fujinon-S 100 mm f/3.5 (the standard issue lens).
The Fujinon SW S 65 mm f/8 wide-angle (with its 77° field of view, the real culprit behind those display window panoramas).
The Fujinon TS 180 mm f/5.6 medium telephoto (with a 32° field of view) and the historic boxes of Fujicolor N100 roll film.
BL camera, get back to the point,The almost clandestine presence of that beast (the famous "Texas Leica") hidden under the Studio-Agency counter, behind the two-door hatch alongside the battery of Rolleis belonging to the owner Rocco Abriola, captures a visual work culture of bygone days perfectly. The boss's Rollei 2.8 was the daily workhorse, but when there was a real need to widen the field or push the quality, the Fujica was brought out.
Because sure, you could always mount on Rolleiflex the Mutar optical attachments onto the twin-lens reflex—the semi-wide or the medium-telephoto that covered both lenses,: functional, nothing special, but usable. Hovewer the Fujica BL was another story entirely: it was a true giant "Leica" with native interchangeable lenses. And above all, with a 6x9 negative from which you could pull, without ifs or buts, the 50x60 prints for the window display (Foto-Lampo-Agency) on Via Pretoria the Main Street. Those paper giants became real street-side newspapers for the passersby walking downtown, stopping people in their tracks whether for breaking news or a detail of a vernacular theater actor like Z' Gerard' Crisci.
The choice to load the Fujica with the unmatched Agfapan 100 black and white, was the must, as well as the Agfachrome transparencies with that melancholic, Delicate nuances, and beautiful veil of Nordich colors, which could be processed at home at 20°C long before the standardized E-6 cauldron homogenized everything.
Fujica BL used, for example, to hard-hitting news to the brochure or typing courses run by the Canossian Sisters the Fujica was present, always went back to its place under the counter, ready for the next assignment.

Ps. Advertising inside Tutti Fotografi, Editorial Progresso Fotografico, September 1970

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