tbyfield on Mon, 15 May 2000 00:28:39 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> (fwd) Happy birthday, Brownie |
DATE=5/12/2000 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT TITLE=100 YEARS OF MASS PHOTOGRAPHY NUMBER=5-46306 BYLINE=LARRY FREUND DATELINE=NEW YORK CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: One hundred years ago, the Eastman Kodak Company began manufacturing a camera that would radically change photography, making it available to the mass market and, in effect, creating the family snapshot. As correspondent Larry Freund reports, the anniversary is being observed in the company's headquarters city, Rochester, in northern New York State. TEXT: Before today's digital cameras, before the instant camera and the throw-away camera, before the 35-millimeter single-lens-reflex camera there was the Brownie. /// Gustavson actuality /// The Brownie is one of those few products that takes a fairly new technology - which was roll film which I guess had been introduced by Eastman Kodak Company back in 1888 - and puts it in the hands of the average people. /// End actuality /// Todd Gustavson is Curator of Technology at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. The museum - in the home of the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company - is presenting (5/13 - 11/5) an exhibit about the camera that it says launched the popularity of photography. The Brownie, named after a famous cartoon character printed on the camera, was popular because it was relatively cheap. /// Gustavson actuality /// The Brownie sold for one dollar, which in today's money is about 20 dollars. Film for the Brownie was 15 cents which is in reality about what film costs today. From an economic standpoint, it made photography accessible to just about anybody who wanted to try it. /// End actuality /// The original Brownie box camera was made with inexpensive materials - cardboard with wood reinforcements, fewer parts than earlier cameras - so it could be sold cheaply. Some 150-thousand Brownies were sold in their first year, 1900, and, says curator Todd Gustavson, the stage was set for a new era of popular photography. /// Gustavson actuality /// Suddenly, the Brownie camera shows up. It's a good-functioning, fairly well-made product with good results. And it allows people, for a very modest investment, to start photographing things that are important to them, whether it is family members or important events in a family history, things that people are proud of, whether it is their first automobile or their first house or the largest fish that they caught on vacation. So it really changes the way that families are able to record their own personal history. /// End actuality /// The first model of the Brownie - the simple box camera - was produced by Eastman Kodak until 1916. Through 1970, the company produced about 120 models of cameras labeled Brownie in its plants around the world. In a recent speech, the president of Eastman Kodak, Daniel Carp, described the introduction of the Brownie camera as a watershed moment in modern photography. And he called on today's producers of digital cameras to follow George Eastman's strategy of advertising and promotion to break through what Mr. Carp described as the technical and marketing challenges facing his industry. Eastman House curator Todd Gustavson says digital photography is still not at the level of affordability reached by the Brownie camera one century ago. /// Gustavson actuality /// I suppose digital photography is on the Brownie road, if you would, but I don't really think it's quite there yet. Great strides have been made, no doubt, but it's still not quite accessible to the numbers of people that the Brownie ended up being accessible to. /// End actuality /// About 100 Brownie cameras are on display at Eastman House, including a pre-production model, a stereo Brownie from 1909 and a rare model from 1945 bearing the image of Mickey Mouse. (Signed) NEB/LSF/KBK 12-May-2000 16:37 PM EDT (12-May-2000 2037 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net