Sounds like you are talking about a Focal-Plane Shutter or 'Slit-Scan'
photography.

Could the guy be called Henri Lartigue?

He (and others) are mentioned here...

http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-slit-scan.html

Hope that helps

Most sports photography in the early 20th C were done with Graflex and
similar cameras with a cloth focal-plane shutter. To get shutter
speeds high enough to stop fast motion they had to use a narrow slit.

The Graflex was a SLR that was viewed through a tall leather hood from
above--no pentaprism. They came in sizes from 2 1/4" X 3 1/4" (6x9 cm)
up to 8" x 10".

To set the shutter speed, you wound up the shutter to one of a series
of tensions with a key. Then you selected the slit with another
control. A table on the side of the box gave the shutter speed for
each combination.

The Graflexes I have seen went up to 1/1500 sec.

Speed Graphic folding cameras (made by Graflex) had a similar shutter,
although they are often used with a between-the-lens shutter in front.

So, many photographers made pictures with the wheels of cars leaning
forward, a feature which became an indication of speed. Cartoonists
drew wheels the same way to indicat faste motion.

More than you wanted to see, but I hope helpful.

Rodney Myrvaagnes       NYC                                                 J36 Gjo/a

"Wanting to meet a writer because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate."
Margaret Atwood

Daniel Kelly (AKA Jack) wrote:

It was Jacques-Henri Lartigue, as indicated, and his shutter did not
'run slow' - it actually ran at exactly the same speed as all other
focal planes of the day, which was pretty slow. This kind of shutter
still existed right into the 1950s, in the VN Press Camera and the
Thornton-Pickard (and many others). It had separate controls for
tensioning the shutter (a twin blind), setting the gap (the slit width)
and setting the running speed of the shutter (slow, slower, or very
slow!). A skilled operator could set the exposure without needing the
table printed on the side of most cameras, which showed the equivalent
combination of the slit and running speed for each fraction of a second.

Lartigue was very young when some of his famous action pictures were
taken. He did not know you couldn't really shoot action, so he took
'snapshots' (the correct term) when other photographers would even have
tried. Several of the results, because of the vertically-run focal plane
shutter of his camera, have that slanted look which made them
distinctive and gave them appeal to the
Expressionist/Modernist/Vorticist schools - depiction of movement, by
multiple images, blur or distortion was one of the neglected aspects of
still photography which was explored by photo artists in the 1900-1930
period.

Lartigue was also famous because he liked women, particularly actresses
and singers or models, and society beauties. The fast cars, small
aeroplanes, horses, boats etc were very much part of his wealthy family
background and many of his shots show family or friends indulging in
expensive new pastimes. This, and the survival of the albums he put
together starting as a teenager, ensured his recognition in later years.
In many ways he was a naive photographer, and again, it was his family's
prosperity which meant he took snapshots using a very costly focal plane
shutter camera and the latest materials.

But that effect was not engineered on purpose; it was a 'discovery',
really a fault which more professional photographers would have avoided.

You can get the same effect with a Pentax 6 x 7cm SLR - traverse time
for the horizontal focal plane shutter 1/40th - or an old Pentacon Six -
traverse time for only 6 x 6cm about 1/25th. You need to hold the camera
sideways (vertical composition for the Pentax, makes no difference for
the Pentacon/Kiev/Exakta66 etc but using the viewfinder is impossible!)
and set a shutter speed like 1/500th (1/1000th on some models, also
works with the old Hasselblad 1000F), tripod mount the camera do not pan
with the subject - panning removes the effect. Four different effects
are possible - speed-effect stretching (front leans forward), braking
effect stretching (front leans backwards), stretching (shutter direction
same as subject) and compression (shutter direction opposes subject).
You must remember the image on film moves in the opposite direction to
the subject in front of you - subject goes left to right, shutter need
to go right to left to 'track' it. With most older focal plane cameras,
the best effect is achieved with subjects moving from right to left
across the frame, which is regrettably the opposite of the best effect
for visual motion signalling (for western viewers and Japanese - any
culture which reads left to right across a page will 'see' forward
motion in a picture more positively if this is left to right too).

One of two other older cameras can do this - the Exa (drum-shutter small
version of the Exacta with variable slit), the Contax I-III or similar
Kiev, and old Leicas with a vertical composition. The Contax is best
suited to it because the shutter runs vertically, as does the Exa
1/1a/500, and this means you can use a landscape shaped composition. It
does not matter which way the motion goes, with a vertically run shutter
using a downward action (most shutters) the effect will always be
'speed' with the top of the subject ahead of the bottom.

The slit traverse time of modern focal plane 35mm cameras is typically
1/90th to 1/200th, which means that to achieve a speed of 1/1000th at a
typical traverse time of 1/125 the slit is 1/8th of 24mm in width - 3mm.
This is a bit wide relative to the format to get Lartigue-like images
even of the fastest subjects.

DK
Look out for f2 magazine - launch in June 2004, replaces 'Freelance'
See http://www.freelancephotographer.co.uk/

henri latrigue