Camera

The Soviet Zenit 3M camera was manufactured for export between 1962 and 1970. At the time, the UK represented the USSR's largest export market for photographic equipment. This one belonged to Jack Amos, a prominent London trade unionist and political activist.

Jack Amos began his working life in the 1960s as a projectionist at the ABC cinema in Croydon where he became active in the National Association of Theatrical, Television and Kine Employees (NATTKE). From 1971 he worked as a projectionist at De Lane Lea studios on Dean Street, Soho. He was a trade union shop steward in the Association of Cinematograph Television and Allied Trades (ACTT) and led the successful 1974 strike and occupation at the company's premises. He later worked as Senior Librarian for Pathé Films in Soho and at Elstree and managed the archives of Education and Television Films, which specialised in films from the Warsaw Pact countries. In retirement he worked as a volunteer at 2 Willow Road in Hampstead, the former residence of the Hungarian Modernist architect Erno Goldfinger, who was a personal friend. Jack was a long-time member of the Communist Party until 1991.

A keen amateur photographer, Jack used the Zenit to photograph political events, his family and their Hampstead neighbourhood. He also used it to document his many travels in the Soviet Union.