ISOLATED by his peers for political reasons, a young man occupied himself by playing with his father's cameras - and gradually devoted himself to a career of recording and preserving camera culture.

Gao's Camera Museum in Hangzhou was established by Gao Jisheng in 1993 and is the country's first camera museum.

Though covering less than 100 square meters, the museum boasts many precious pieces, including the country's first camera, a valuable wet-plate camera made in England in 1850, and limited edition camera that commemorated the 50th anniversary of October Revolution.

The 68-year-old curator began collecting cameras at the age of 18. So far, Gao has collected more than 1,400 cameras. Most of them are antique cameras, only a few are digital. Half of Gao's collections are held at the museum, while the other half are kept in his apartment.

The private museum is open from 8am to 3pm daily, free of charge. It also offers free identification of antique cameras.

Gao was bitten by the camera bug when he was young.

His father was a Kuomintang official and therefore considered as one of the hei wu lei (five black categories), the five undesirable political identities during the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976). As a result, the young man was isolated, especially by his peers.

To amuse himself, the lonely child trained his eyes on his father's cameras. Gao's father was previously a reporter and owned more than 20 cameras.

"Photography, unlike other activities or sports that need a group of people, is an individual pursuit in which I don't need to bother about others," Gao recalls.

By learning from photography books, the young man immersed himself into the art.

Since he couldn't afford the film, Gao looked for obsolete film rolls in the wastebaskets of nearby photo studios.

As he improved his photography skills, Gao began to study the structure of cameras. He dismantled his father's broken cameras and examined how they worked.

"I repaired some of them, while others I was unable to put back together!" the old man roars with laughter, as if he had returned to the age when the experience of cameras enriched his lonely life.

But that was only the start. As his knowledge of cameras grew, Gao desired to own more cameras.

His dream began to be realized at the age of 18, when he graduated from high school and got his first job as a math and substitute Chinese teacher in a local elementary school.

His first monthly payment was only 30.5 yuan (US$4.67), but he spent 30 yuan on a Zeiss camera, while the remaining 0.5 yuan went toward food expenses for him and his mother for a month.

"I just wanted to collect more cameras. I was addicted," he says.

To collect more cameras would cost him more money so Gao knew he had to earn more.

Unfortunately, after teaching for one year, he was made unemployed because of his hei wu lei association.

He took work as a stevedore, but was fired because he fell into a river while carrying a bag containing 150 kilograms of salt.

Gao decided to be a technician. For five years, he toured many cities in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces looking for an apprenticeship or taking on work.

The time was extremely hard for Gao. Because of financial problems and political reasons, he sometimes lived in ruined houses, and even in forests. However, he never gave up his camera dream.

When he was in Xiaoshan, Gao took a job to turn a large pesticide sprayer into six small single-barrel sprayers, which would earn him 200 yuan, a large sum at that time.

Gao immediately ran to a camera store and gave the owner 20 yuan as a deposit for a two-lens Rollei camera, saying he would come to collect it the next day.

In the evening, while working on the sprayer he was knocked out by pesticide that had turned into gas and didn't regain consciousness until a friend took him to a doctor.

Unexpectedly, his first words upon waking up were "I can get the camera tomorrow!" And when he had recovered and finished the work that's exactly what he did.

Gao's nomadic time endowed him in many ways - techniques, wisdom and age. In 1966, he was employed by Hangzhou Iron and Steel Factory as a technician.

Unluckily, his right index finger was cut off due to a machine fault and since then he has to press camera shutter buttons using his middle finger.

Anyhow, he earned more money, and began to buy more cameras, making more expensive purchases.

"I am like Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote, adventurous and I never give up," Gao says of himself.

The adventurous camera addict has done many crazy things because of his passion, such as using up his wedding money to buy three cameras, running 10 camera stores and studios when the reform and opening-up polices began in the late 1970s, and selling the 10 stores to collect more cameras for his camera museum.

In his museum, the most expensive camera he has bought is the Ross wet-plate camera which cost him 20,300 yuan in 1989.

The treasure was produced in London in 1850. It features a 1.5-kilogram gilded bronze lens that extends to 30-centimeter long and is 10 centimeters in diameter. It also has a rosewood lens base.

"I took a train to Tianjin and lived in a small inn for three days, waiting for the seller, the director of a camera studio, to talk with me," he recalls.

"He quoted 30,000 yuan, and told me that his predecessor had got the camera from an Englishman by exchanging it for gold that was worth the camera's weight.

"I said I only have 20,000 yuan. No one in the country will buy your camera except me. It's better to sell it to an expert than store it in your warehouse."

The deal was done several days later.

In 2009 when an English photographer saw Gao's Ross camera in an exhibition, he exclaimed "Mr Gao, you are so wealthy because you own that camera."

Gao later discovered that a camera valued much less than his Ross wet-plate camera sold for 6 million yuan in an auction in 2006.

Besides the Ross, Gao boasts another priceless camera, a box camera produced in a handcraft workshop in Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, in 1843 that he accidently bought at a flea market in Ningbo.

"There's only one in the world, so it is priceless," Gao says proudly.

"Wealthy" Gao lives a poor life.

The old man takes buses between his home and the museum, his lunch is made at home by his wife and if no one visits the museum, he won't even bother turning the lights on.

In the museum covering less than 100 square meters, Gao employs no other staff - he is the curator, guide, appraiser, security guard and cleaner.

Even so, the enthusiastic camera fan will not sell any of his cameras.

"I save the cameras as well as the culture of cameras, not only for myself, but for the country," Gao says.

"In the 1980s, I noticed a batch of foreigners arriving in China hunting old cameras," Gao says. "Meanwhile, I found some photographers who didn't know the values of old cameras had sold their old cameras as scrap, so I started an appeal to stop this from happening."

From an original 300-plus cameras in the museum to today's 1,400 pieces, Gao has persisted every single day over 18 years.

"I am nearly 70, and I feel exhausted to work everyday, especially when I am sick," the old man says. "But as long as I am alive, the museum opens."

But since all his savings have been spent on cameras, his son spends 100,000 yuan a year to cover the expenses of running the museum. However, his son, though a photographer, is not willing to take over the museum due to the losses it makes.

Gao worries about what will happen to the museum once he dies.

Gao is also bothered about location problems. In the past 18 years, the venue of Gao's museum has changed nine times due to various reasons, and the current place, which is damp and shady, is not appropriate for storing cameras.

"My biggest wish is to find a settled place for them," Gao says.