Sepia Saturday 177: Let the Children Kodak, the beloved Brownie camera

Among a group of old photographs given to me a few years ago by a friend, collected by her father in New Hampshire, are several mounted prints of identical size which, judging by the clothing worn by the subjects, appear to have been taken in the first few years of the twentieth century. The prints measure roughly 2¼" x 3¼" (58 x 80mm) and are mounted on card about 4" x 5" (100 x 125mm) in a variety of colours, including white, cream, grey and green. Sadly none of these four photographs have the subjects identified, and the provenance has long been lost, so all I have been able to deduce is that they are probably from New Hampshire or Massachusetts, and that the last two are of the same person.


Unidentified mother and daughter, undated estd. c.1900-1905
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
The first, rather charming glossy print is in what we would now refer to as landscape format, and is pasted on a gray and white coloured card with an embossed pattern of wavy lines and two series of loops, and with a bevelled edge. The young girl and an older woman, who look alike enough to be mother and child, are kneeling/crouching on a leaf-strewn lawn adjacent to a narrow path which curves along a hedge and behind them under the shade of a tree, and then disappears around a corner. The narrowness of the path suggests a private garden, and the fallen leaves presumably imply that it is autumn. The woman's long skirt, light-coloured blouse with slightly puffy sleeves narrowing at the elbow and pompadour hairstyle, together the girl's large-sleeved jacket and a bow at the top of her head all point to a date in the early 1900s, say between 1900 and 1905.

It's worth noting that there appears to have been some light leakage, either in the camera or during film removal, causing a wavy band of over-exposure - or fogging - along the top edge of the print. The photographer has chosen a good viewing angle so that the sun, to the right of and slightly behind the camera, and already fairly high in the sky (so probably taken in the late morning or early afternoon), casts some shadows on the subjects's faces and clothing, illuminating them with relief rather than flattening the tonal variation.


Unidentified girl with dog, Undated, estd. c.1905-1915
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
The second photo, in portrait format, is also marred with a little over-exposure along the upper left-hand edge and in the lower half of the image, although the fact that it is not just confined to the edges suggests that it may be due to a poor choice of lighting angle, rather than careless handling of the rollfilm. The mount is dark greenish-grey coloured card (it looks greener in the scan than in reality, due to my enhancing the rather faded image) with a neatly printed white rectangle framing and drawing attention to the print.

This teenaged girl wears a long skirt and a pouch-fronted top with a sailor-style collar, the broad lapels tied at the front, and a large bow at the back of her head. Although still from the first decade or two of the twentieth century, I suspect this dates from a little later than the first photo, say between 1905 and 1915. She is standing by a staircase leading up to a clapboard house with wooden shutters. A creeper growing up the side of a pillar on the edge of a verandah has very few leaves, so perhaps this is was also taken in autumn. The dog appears to have been caught in mid-scratch, but it's in the middle of the over-exposed bit, so even if I did know more about dogs I probably wouldn't be able to identify the breed.


Unidentified woman and shrubbery, Undated, estd. c.1905-1910
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
The next two portraits show the same young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties to early thirties, posing amongst palms, ferns and succulents, probably originating from a much warmer climate. Despite the external view of a series of second-storey windows in the background, I have come to the conclusion that both snapshots were taken in a conservatory or glass-roofed courtyard, as there is plenty of light coming down from directly above, but it looks too well manicured (one of the potted plants even has a label) to be outdoors. Besides, she appears to be dressed for winter weather, rather than the warm conditions necessary for the cultivation of such fauna. Perhaps this accounts for her slightly unhappy demeanour - the humidity in there is causing some discomfort.


Unidentified woman and shrubbery, by undated estd. c.1905-1910
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
Both are mounted on greyish card with bevelled edges, although of slightly different shades and ornamentation - one has a fancy patterned white border around the print, the other a simple embossed, grey rectangular border. The woman's clothing consists of a high-necked blouse, a double-breasted full length coat with velvet collar and sleeves which are wide at the shoulder but tapering towards the elbow. She is wearing leather gloves, a large corsage of roses, and a wide-brimmed hat with substantial floral-style decoration on the top to match the flowers. All of these combine to suggest to me an approximate date of between 1905 and 1910.

Neither photo looks over-exposed, the fuzzy patches of light in the second image probably being due to the dappled sunlight. Both prints have a matt finish, with the slight silvery sheen in darker areas characteristic of many silver gelatin prints from this era, produced by degradation of the emulsion.


"Let the Children Kodak"
1909 Advertisement by Eastman Kodak Co.
Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
Besides the print/mount size and the fact that they were taken in bright sunlight, there is another common feature that the sharper-spotted of readers may have noticed - all four are taken from an approximately waist-high viewing position. With regard to the print size, since by far the majority of photographs were contact printed during the pre-War years, we can assume that it equates to the film size. The 105 and 120 roll film formats produced by Eastman Kodak Ltd., both measuring 2¼" x 3¼", were introduced in 1897 and 1901, respectively, narrowing the type of camera likely to have been used to one or more of the following new models introduced around the turn of the century:

• the Folding Pocket Kodak (1897-1899) & No 1 Folding Pocket Kodak (1899-1915) both used 105 film
• the No 2 Brownie (1901-1933) & No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie (1904-1915) both used 120 film

No 2 Buster Brown box camera, 1906-1923, by Ansco
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
There were also several competing companies which produced similar models, such as Ansco's No 2 Buster Brown box camera introduced in 1906. A feature included with all of these devices was the prismatic viewfinder, which enabled a user to frame a picture by holding the camera at waist level, in either portrait or landscape orientation, and looking vertically downwards, just as the child is doing in the 1909 advertisement for a Brownie above.


"The Brownie Family"
1909 Advertisement by Eastman Kodak Co.
Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
The first Brownie was introduced in February 1900, and was soon joined by a range of models, initially marketed very firmly towards use by children. The No 2 Brownie, ostensiby being operated by the young girl with two bows in her hair, second from right in the above advertisement, was by far the highest selling. First sold in October 1901, by the time the Model F was discontinued in 1933 several million had been manufactured.


"There's no better fun than picture taking ... The Brownie Family"
1909 Advertisement by Eastman Kodak Co.
Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
Kodak advertisements appearing throughout the first decade of the twentieth century reinforced the message that the family of Brownie cameras belonged in your family, and that there was a Brownie for every age and pocket. The No 2 Brownie cost a mere $2.00, and the more versatile No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie just $5.00. For the first time, cameras and photography were within the reach of almost everyone.


No 2 Brownie Model F, 1924-1933, by Eastman Kodak Co
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
This No 2 Brownie from the Tauranga Heritage Collection is a Model F, manufactured a couple of decades after the four photographs displayed above were taken, but the overall design had changed little. The phenomenal success of the Brownie, originally marketed for children in a massive media campaign, meant that within a decade a huge number of American and British families owned a box camera, even if the majority of them were not actually being used by children. The claim that by 1910 a third of all Americans owned a camera (Jenkins, 2005) seems hardly credible, but certainly by 1921 over 2.5 million No 2 Brownies alone had been produced (Coe, 1978), making this by far the most popular of the models which used this film format.


View of river scene with building and boat, undated
Silver gelatin print on Velvet Velox paper (2¼" x 3¼") mounted on embossed "Brownie" brand brown card (4" x 5") with bevelled edges
Taken with No 2 Brownie camera, by an unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
These two images (above and below) show the front and reverse of another example of a mounted print from a No 2 Brownie, displayed by antique camera enthusiast Jos Erdkamp on the web site which documents his collection of early Kodaks. Jos, who very kindly took the trouble to send me detailed scans and gave me permission to reproduce these images, writes:

It is not rare, it is not expensive, it even is not pretty, but it is the camera that recorded our history during the first part of the 20th century. The No. 2 Brownie was made in large numbers: several million and at least 2,500,000 before 1921. Together with the 2A Brownie, which took a slightly larger photo and was also made in several millions, it was the camera that could be found in most families. In all the snaps these cameras have taken, the small and also not so small events of the first half of the last century are documented. For this it deserves a place of honor in camera history.

Reverse of No 2 Brownie card mount (4" x 5")
Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
The printed text on the back states:

Velox print showing the size and quality of negative made with the No. 2 Brownie Ccamera and No. 2 Folding Pocket Brownie Camera - Mounted with Kodak Dry Mounting Tissue - Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, N.Y.

This, together with the text "Velvet Velox" inserted on the print itself, suggests to me that the photo may have been a commercially produced promotion sample, rather than an ordinary amateur snapshot. However, the colour and embossed frame of the mount is very similar to that of the fourth print in my own collection, and was obviously a commonly used design.


No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie, 1904-1915, by Eastman Kodak Co
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
The other camera mentioned is the No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie, the smallest of the simple folding Brownies produced by Kodak in these early years. It is shown being used by a young lad, perhaps 9 or 10 years old (fourth from right), in the 1909 advertisement above, and also took 120 format rollfilm. Along with its predecessor the No 2 Folding Brownie, only 250,000 were produced between 1904 and 1915.


Bullock cart, Philippines, 1898
Silver gelatin print (2¼" x 3¼") on glossy embossed card mount (4" x 5")
Taken with Folding Pocket Kodak camera, photographer unidentified
Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
Another possibility for the 2¼" x 3¼" format print are the Folding Pocket Kodak (1897-1899) and its successor the No 1 Folding Pocket Kodak (1899-1915), both of which used 105 rollfilm and sold for $10, some 200,000 of which were produced. Jos Erdkamp has a very nice example of such a photograph, taken in the Philippines in 1898, which is mounted on glossy white card conveniently embossed with the words, "Folding Pocket Kodak." The style of mount, using glossy pale grey card embossed with a zig-zag pattern, is similar to that used for the first of my examples above.

During and after the Great War (1914-1918) the range of camera models which used 120 format film expanded dramatically, although the No 2 Brownie continued to enjoy great popularity for many years. At the same time, the fashion for mounting prints appears to have changed somewhat, and it became far more common to supply the customer with loose unmounted prints, which were of course a lot cheaper. However, if you have similar mounted prints dating from before the war, it may also be possible to identify the camera with which they were produced. I welcome contributions, so if you find any in your own family collection, please do get in touch - they may provide interesting material for a follow up article.

I hope to feature more film/print formats in the future, as I feel the matching of prints to cameras is a poorly studied field in photohistory. In the mean time, I expect a visit to Sepia Saturday's other contributers this week will reveal a few more child-oriented themes.

References

Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers, p 89-91, 99-102.

Erdkamp, Jos (nd) No 2 Brownie (1901) and Folding Pocket Kodak, on Antique Kodak Cameras from the Collection of Kodaksefke.

Frost, Lenore (1991) Dating Family Photos 1850-1920, Victoria, Australia: Lenore Frost, 127pp.

Gustavson, Todd (2009) Camera, A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital, New York: Sterling, 360pp.

Jenkins, Karen (2005) Brownie, in Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography, Warre, Lynn (ed.), London: Routledge.

West, Nancy Martha (2000) Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia, University Press of Virginia.