“She always says the camera found me and not vice versa,” photographer Kurt Moser said, denoting his collaborator, Barbara Holzknecht. “This project is more than work and it’s more than a project. It’s a lifestyle for me.”
Mr. Moser found his ambrotype camera—a clunky salvage from 1907, larger than a man—while visiting a photographer’s studio in Milan in search of old antique camera parts. Seeking brass lenses, he arrived and was invited to have coffee and see what they had. Though he found no brass lenses that day, on his way out he saw the “huge, beautiful wooden bellow” under a dust-covered blanket and thought it was the most beautiful thing. He bought it on the spot and took it home….