Beauty from within

A four decades endeavour to create the world's greatest flash

Forty years ago, two photographers decided they wanted to create the world's best flash system. One of them had a lot experience from the retail market for professional photo equipment. The other with a university degree in electrical engineering. Together, they created Profoto.

Stockholm, January, 2008. A pale sun is penetrating the hazy winter sky and it's actually not that cold, after all. I enter the 19th century building and take the ancient elevator to the top floor. My mission: to meet with Mr Conny Dufgran, co-founder of Profoto. I ring the bell.

A few minutes later I'm seated in a comfortable couch, behind a cup of steaming jasmine tea and a huge glass bowl of spicy cookies. The large room is filled with books, paintings, magazines and various paper piles. At the far end, there is a corner balcony with a view along each of the streets that meet below.

– Do you want to ask me questions or should I just talk freely, the man in the armchair next to me asks. He is quite handsome and looks very kind. Like a hollywood Santa Claus, although with a shorter beard and more stylish glasses.

Of course, this is Conny Dufgran, the man who founded Profoto 40 years ago, in 1968, together with the late Eckhard Heine. But the story begins a lot earlier, and it is truly a story about photography.

– There was so much going on after the second world war. During the 1950s, the economy was soaring and you could find jobs anywhere. For me, it started out during my military service, when I got to know an already established photographer. Back from the military, he started working at a photo shop in Södertälje, a small company town some 40 km south of Stockholm.

– I learned to take portraits, if only for people's passports. Perhaps more importantly, I also learned to do business.

Slow and heavy packs

Later on, he moved into Stockholm city and started working for the big distributor/retailer Molander&son, who had just started to serve the large institutional clients during the late 1950s.

– But there was noone who really focused on photographers, so in the beginning of the 1960s, that became my job. The first things I did was to go to Photokina and find suitable products. In particular, he was looking for a good flash system.

– Back then, most flash generators were very heavy, weighing 50 kg or more, and quite slow. And that had been ok, because the cameras themselves didn't allow a very fast operation. However, all of that changed during the late 1950s, when polyester was introduced as the film base.

Although thinner, polyester film is much stronger than the earlier acetate based one. This meant that advancing of the film could be done much faster, especially when it was motorised.

– Fashion photographers - and the press - wanted this speed. But the generators couldn't really deliver it. One manufacturer had reasonably fast packs, with recycling in about 4 seconds, but if you fired them more than a few times per minute, they would often break ...

He just built his own

This is when the second Profoto founder enters the story.

– One day, this guy with a German accent comes into the shop to buy a flash. He couldn't afford the major brands, so I showed him a cheaper one. However, the unit didn't work. To be honest, I think I used the wrong power supply, but nevertheless, that failing pack made him go straight home and build one on his own ...

Eckhard Heine was a German electronics engineer who had grown up in Berlin, and later moved to Stockholm, while working as an engineer. On the side, Eckhard was also an avid photographer, and one day, he photographed some children at a kindergarten.

– When the parents saw the pictures, they were thrilled and gave him more portrait work. A lot more.

His success was so great that he quit his engineering job and started working full time as a photographer, with a special interest in children and portraiture.

– Among other things, he did some very distinguished work on working-class children in Liverpool, that ended up in a documentary for Swedish national TV. Then, one day, Eckhard wanted to by himself a decent flash. So he went to Molander&son ...

– A couple of weeks after our first encounter, Eckhard returned to the shop with a rather simple monolight unit he called Maxilux. It wasn't exactly beautiful, but quite revolutionary in another way: it worked...

Repairing by improving

During a few months, Molander&son sold around 50 units of the Maxilux. This was however not the birth of Profoto. Just the first sign of Eckhard Heines technical genius.

– He built a lot of other photo equipment as well, among other things an electronic device for measuring the exposure during printing. Since Conny had a lot of problems with the packs from the dominating manufacturer, he asked Eckhard to repair them.

– The repairing quickly became a full time job. And Eckhard quickly got better and better at doing it. For instance, at some point he started to put in other - better - components than the original parts.

When the photographers heard about the "magic fingers" of Eckhard, they started sending broken packs directly to him. And some of them said: why don't you create a really good flash generators that works, right from the beginning ...

– This was when we started talking about doing something together, around 1965, but nothing happened and then I quit Molander&son, because I wanted to work as a photographer. Conny found work at travel agencies, shooting material for broschures and catalogues, mainly in Spanish resorts.

– I did the entire Spanish Mediterranean coastline during four months in the beginning of 1967, from Lloret de Mar to Gibraltar. That was fun, but it wasn't a living, so I gave it up and came home.
Back home, he quickly hooked up with his - by now - very good friend Eckhard.

– "Come over, I want to show you something", he said to me, so I went straight to his little workshop.

A fantastic potential

So there they were, the two men around the simple workbench in the small space that Eckhard rented in an old warehouse in southern Stockholm. As Eckhard lifted up the prototype pack and put it on the table, the first thing that struck Conny was the color.

- It was jet black and that was something that we had talked about. Most electronic equipment at this time was a lacquered, granulated grey. Or worse: shiny. But in a photo studio, things should be black. That was a revolutionary idea at the time.

At 8 kg (17 lbs) it was also extremely light-weight. When Eckhard then demonstrated the 2 second recycling time, Conny understood that the product had a fantastic potential. -Eckhard hadn't succeeded in selling it to anyone, but with my experience and network I had orders for 25 packs in just a few days. And to tell you the truth, that basically the only selling we really did.

By the time the 25 were manufactured and delivered, rumour had spread, so that they then had orders for 50 more. During the first year, they sold around 100 packs, which was enough for them to make a living out of it.

From the start, the entire design had the photographer in mind. And not only when it came to raw features.

– The modules inside the pack were easily exchangable and on the outside we printed our telephone number. That meant that even a remote photographer could get up and running again quickly, if anything should happen with the circuits.

This very first design did not include a lamp head. Instead it was compatible with the largest brand on the market at the time.

– New photographers then had to buy the pack from us and the lamp head from Molander&son. So they raised the price on the lamp head and lowered the price on the packs ...

The smartest of lamp heads

Conny and Eckhard realised they had to create an entire system of their own. Again, Eckhard locked himself in for a while.

– It took him less than a week, but I still think that the lamp head was our very smartest invention ever.

Where others used a U-shaped flash tube with modellings lamps around it, they had a ringshaped flash tube with the modelling light in the middle. For a more accurate modelling light. Where others had a fixed position for the light shaper, Eckhard made a lamp head where you could slide the accessory along it, and fine-tune the effect. And then it was the glass cover.

– We used quartz in the flash tube, instead of glass. That was more reliable, but it also created some flourescence problems, since quartz doesn't filter UV light. So we added a frosted glass cover and that's how we created the renowned "beautiful" Profoto light, I think.

They also developped a new sync cable and connector. Having created an entire system, they named it Pro-1, efter the company name Profoto.

– The initial idea was to sell different kinds of photographic equipment, but very quickly the flash systems became the dominant product. So the Swedish market was more or less taking care of itself. What about going abroad with the Pro-1?

– It was actually Eckhard's wife who thought we should go to Photokina. And so we did, in the fall of 1968. By car, since Eckhard refused to fly ...

The men in black

They rented a 3x3 m booth and drove down in Conny's little Volvo. At the show, the drew a lot of attention, especially because of the colour theme of the booth.

– We kept it all black. The pack, the background and our suits. The only thing white was a cubic box where we kept the pack and our shirts. Today, that's nothing special at all, but at the time, people thought we were crazy...

Business wise, the trip was a success. On their way down to Cologne, they had got themselves a distributor in Denmark. During the show, Profoto found resellers for Norway, Italy and Belgium.

– There were also some US distributors that were interested, but unfortunately we only made the Pro-1 for 220 V mains...

During the early years, Conny and Eckhard travelled a lot, and always by car. Trips such as going from Stockholm to Moscow in February, then continuing down and touring Europe, from trade show to trade show.

–We had a lot of fun, that's fore sure, Conny says, with that ever present sparkle in his eyes.

The rest of the Profoto story is, well, history, with a steady expansion and development in both products and markets during the decades. Filled with anecdotes that tells a lot about the difference that Profoto made right from the very beginning.

Successful concrete falls

In 1970, when the French representative wanted to introduce the Pro-1 to the Zoom photography magazine, he lifted it from the concrete floor and let it fall, over and over again, then showing the journalist that it still flashed. The result was a three-page-article and immediate sales of over 100 units.

-I was in the next room and thought he had gone completely mad. Of course, we had made the unit rugged, but it wasn't meant for that kind of treatment. Luckily, it didn't break... During a few weeks in 1973s, then, orders from Japanese rental studios more than double the annual production.

– We hadn't even heard of rental studios, but there were almost 200 of them in Tokyo at the time.

Japan then remained the biggest market until 1985 when the sales in the US really picked up. The US breakthrough depending to some degree on another episode, from 1984, when Oleh Sharanevych, the future owner of the famous Track Rental studio in New York, set up a Pro-3A to flash every three seconds, in order to test its durability.

– He then forgot about it only to find the unit three days later, still dutifully flashing. The generator had output around 90 000 flashes without failing or overheating. That was for sure very impressive, by any measures.

The importance of aestethics

Other stories are more related to the design aspects of Profoto's products. For instance, already in the 1970s, models would sometimes tease photographers who didn't use the cool black Profoto equipment. In the early 1990s, there was another funny model related incident, at the MoMA in New York.

– My wife was having coffee with the Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, when the Swedish top model of the time, Emma Sjöberg, walks up to them to say hello. Then my wife said: "maybe you can explain what my husband is doing ". And Emma replied: "Without Profoto you can not be beautiful" ... Fact is that the idea of creating equipment that was beautiful in itself was there from the very beginning.

– I used to say that a photographer's tools should be like the painter's brush, the violinst's bow, the sculptor's chisel - practical and esthetically pleasing.

Following a long tradition of minimalist Scandinavian design, the idea was that beauty should come from the uncomplicated adherence to the function, always with the needs of the photographer in focus.

– The clasps holding our light shaping tools embody those thoughts perfectly.

The rubber close to the lamp head creates a superb grip and at the same time isolates it from the heat. The metal clasp is simple and fool-proof. On top, when fastened, the clasp creates an aestethically pleasing girdle where the lamp head and the tool meet. As for sheer usability, Conny realised very early on the importance of addressing all of our senses.

– Many photographers work with several packs at the time, often under stress. So we said that any interaction must be recognisable by seeing, hearing and feeling. That's why we have never have used touch controls, for instance.

Seeing, hearing, feeling

From the Pro-1 up to the current Pro-7, there are instead big, well-shaped knobs, with a coloured notch and large, indented figures around them. When turned, there is a distinct clicking. Seeing, hearing, feeling.

– Both of us had photography backgrounds. To that, we always listened intently to what our customers had to say, and adjusted the design accordingly. We still do. During the early 1990s, Eckhard gradually resigned from his post as the "professor" and head of development. In 1997, the current CEO Anders Hedebark took over the operational responsability. But Conny stayed and played an active role in the daily activities, up until 1998, after the sad and sudden demise of Eckhard Heine.

– I felt it was time to relieve Anders from having the owner breathing down his neck. Instead, I went to New York City ...

The US was already a big market for Profoto, but they needed to secure a better distribution. Since the Big Apple had always been a second home for Conny – as well as for Profoto – he happily took the chance to spend some time there.

– I said to myself that I would give it a year and started out by reorganising the logistics from the ground and up. At the end of the year, Conny signed a partnership with the MAC Group, who managed to take sales and marketing to a whole new level.

– We learnt a lot from them, that's for sure.

Painting with oil

Today, Conny leads a calmer life, filled with his big interests design and art, visiting exhibitions in Sweden and abroad, often with his wife, the cultural journalist Ljiljana Dufgran, former chairman of the Swedish PEN club. He doesn't do a lot of photography anymore, but he paints with oils. And he still overseas the development of Profoto.

– Conny represents the soul of Profoto. It's his visions that have made us so successful. I discuss all product development and major marketing decision with him and I value his input a lot, says Anders Hedebark, CEO of Profoto, when I talk to him a few days later.

During the entire visit at Conny's, I haven't done anything but taking notes and sipping on my tea. Questions have not been necessary. After some three hours, Conny's wife comes by and asks us if we're finished.

I guess we are.

My main objective was to understand the roots of Profoto and after a couple of hours with this retired founder I really do. From the very beginning, Profoto was about fulfilling the needs of a hard working professional photographer. And it still is.

It's early afternoon, but the Nordic sun is already setting. I take the creaking elevator down to the street level, zip my down jacket, and head for the nearest subway station.