Friday 17 May 2013

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


Sepia Saturday by Alan Burnett and Kat Mortensen

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.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
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.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
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.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
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.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
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.

Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
"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
Image © Brett Payne and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
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.

Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
"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.

Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
"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.

Image © Brett Payne and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
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.

Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
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.

Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
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.

Image © Brett Payne and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
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.

Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
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.

34 comments:

  1. Very interesting research. I don't think I have noticed any type of camera mentioned on photos I have, other than perhaps just the word Kodak. I'll have to look more closely. The vintage ads are really cool!

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    1. Jos, the owner of those prints, tells me that Eastman Kodak offered those sample photos for sale for a few cents, available from the parent company and probably from dealers too. I think you're less likely to find personal photos in that format.

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  2. Brett I found this very interesting, especially about the Kodak cameras. I was also very pleased that you pointed me in the direction of the Duke University Libraries. They have some wonderful Kodak advertisements.
    Thanks again.
    Sharon

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    1. The "Kodak dream" has played such an important part in the lives of most Americans born in the last century or so, and I think it's intriguing to discuss the connections between the instruments and their output. The link between camera and photograph, of course, mirrors that between photographer and subject.

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  3. I'm always intrigued by the detective work you do on the history and subjects you show. This is an avenue I cannot hope to emulate. I'm learning all the time from what you post.

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    1. Thank you for your kind words, Bob - I'm always pleased to hear from readers who've enjoyed what I've written. I, too, learn a great deal when I research and write the articles. The idea starts small, and then, like Topsy, it grows and grows as I discover more while researching. Isn't the net a wonderful place?

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  4. I especially enjoyed the ads. I didn't know that Kodak promoted camera use by children. I also was interested in your waist level identification.

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    1. Certainly for the first couple of decades of the twentieth century their marketing of the Brownie cameras was very much directed towards children. I believe that eventually they realized that children were not their primary customers, and they directed much of their efforts elsewhere. Despite that, Brownies remained fairly popular with children well into the Sixties, due mainly to their ease of use, after which Instamatics took over. With the eye-level viewfinder, this raised the level of the camera. It shows in the photos.

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  5. I don't think the dog was in mid-scratch because all four feet are on the ground. I think he saw a squirrel in a nearby tree.

    I'm sure that by 1921 both sides of my family had cameras. My mother's family for sure had the basic brownie. The one in the photo looks pretty much the same as the one I remember from the 1950s, that recorded our Saturdays at my grandparents.

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    1. I'm sure you're quite right about the dog.

      Interesting to hear that your family still used the basic Brownie into the 1950s - it's what I had read was quite commonly the case.

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  6. I lived on Kew Green from '74 to '84, a mere stone's throw from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The green house atmosphere seems very familiar from a plant point of view, but I don't think its the Palm House there. You should try the other UK botanical gardens if the photo is UK. Note when searching, Kew = Botanic, other gardens = Botanical. The reason is that the adjective Botanic, in the case of Kew, came from the French Botanique, whereas the English for all things of botany is, or has become, Botanical, as used by other prominent collections. I think that's about correct, and Kew are very fussy about it !!

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    1. Thanks for your suggestions. I'm afraid the conservatory photographs almost certainly come from somewhere in New England (probably New Hampshire or Massachusetts) as I wrote in the first paragraph.

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  7. A fascinating article to develop from such nice but anonymous images, Brett. For the past few years, I've been learning more about camera history and how the particular style of camera changed the way photographers took pictures. I will add Jos Erdkamp's website to my long list of websites on camera technology. I knew about the Duke collection as it is not far from me and on the way to my son's less expensive North Carolina university. He found the Duke campus to be too grand and intimidating.

    Thanks for finding that location in Switzerland for me. And I enjoyed reading the tragic tale of the timber merchant's fire.

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    1. Me too, Mike. As suggested by my rsponse to a previous comment, I'm interested in the relationship between photographer and subject, particularly in family photograph collections, and one way of looking at this aspect is to study the relationship between camera and photo. Jos Erdkamp has a huge collection of early Kodaks, and quite a few examples of photos from specific camera types. I will be returning to his site too.

      Yes, I suppose Duke University has to pay for putting those collections online some way or other. I trust that your son is now enjoying his time at the North Carolina campus?

      The story was very sad, wasn't it, and I suppose the macabre and tragic end may have been one of the reasons, although perhaps subconscious, why Nigel's relative took the photograph and pasted it in his album.

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  8. You sure tickled my happy thoughts with these photos. I always adore photos with dogs, even bought a book devoted to it, but that lady with her shrubbery! What an expression! Funny thing too, back then folks took lots of photos like that, and not so much today! Great selection Brett all the way around, and interesting read for this rainy morning!

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    1. Yes they are a nice selection, and I was lucky to be the recipient of such generosity. Now I'm looking for others of this format in my collection.

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  9. The entire section of photos and information on the Brownie was so interesting. Maybe I should have kept some of those old ones Uncle had, they went into the estate sale and we got mere pennies for them, but could just not keep all that stuff.

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    1. If only we knew then what we know now ... I think we've all been to that unhappy place.

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  10. I vaguely remember being given a Brownie camera as a child in the late 50s. Don't really remember what it looked like and don't know what happened to it. After taking a photography class in college in the 70s, my husband and I picked up a few old cameras (just to display I guess?) and now I am thinking I should bring out the box and see if I can identify them.

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    1. Perhaps you could post some photos of the cameras - I look forward to that. Google's very handy for identifying cameras, as there are so many vintage camera enthusiasts out there.

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  11. Fascinating, especially about the cameras. We inherited a couple of old cameras from Dad; one was identified as a Six-20 Brownie Model D and the other one is more modern but I've no idea what the model is. My daugher has them now with a view to selling them on ebay - where they'll probably fetch only a few pounds.

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    1. The Model C, D and E were the first of the post-war Brownies and were produced in huge numbers. The Model D was still available in 1957 and is possibly the one most commonly seen. Unless it is in mint condition with original box and manual (the holy trinity for collectors, I believe), I suspect you're right, it probably won't fetch a lot.

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    2. Aha! It has the box and the manual!

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    3. Nice to have, if you're a hoarder and collector of things like me, but possibly still not worth a lot, considering the number made.

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  12. It is wonderful to see these artistic old photos. The stories about the people stay open. A sweet picture of Mother and daughter. I love them all. Are you displaying them in your home? I think I am getting an itch to start collecting.

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    1. No I'm afraid I don't have any of these displayed, although I agree it might be a good idea to print out some enlargements and frame them. I think the originals would fade very quickly if exposed to sunlight for too long, so they are kept safely tucked away in archive boxes. If you do start collecting, I hope you'll share some of your finds with us on Sepia Saturday.

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  13. My mother had a Brownie camera, although I do not know the model number. She had it in the 1950s. In the 1980s, she gave it to my sister who continued to use it until the film was no longer available! Sadly, she gave the cameral away to a charity rather than to me. I would have loved to have it just to have that bit of history. My mother also worked for George Eastman in the 1950s. He enjoyed word games quite a lot and would try to find 50 cent words to use in dictation. He called it "stump the secretary." Back then, my mother wrote in shorthand, and while she could generally take down everything he dictated, he loved to see her hesitate over his big words. :-) Apparently he also was a stickler for good posture and would knuckle you in the back if you didn't stand up straight. "Blue Button!" he would shout.

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    1. Sad that the camera has gone, as I think you can still get 120/620 format film if you look in the right places. I can imagine that Eastman was not a particularly easy man to work for, but it must have been a fascinating job.

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  14. That "woman and shubbery" is definitely set in a botanical garden. It is too well manicured to be private. Perhaps if you find a list of botanical gardens in the region and go through their archives, simply to match the floor and borders, as each place seems to be particular about these details, maybe you could find where it was taken.
    :)~
    HUGZ

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    1. I think you could well be right, Bruno. I don't have a good idea of where such institutions might have been in that part of New England in the early 1900s, but perhaps a future reader from there might come up with some ideas.

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  15. I remember that my father had two Box Brownies although by the time I knew them they were no longer used, but stored at the top of the wardrobe. By then they had a little Kodak Brownie 127 and that was particularly prone to light seepage through cracks in its plastic body. I wish I knew what had happened to those Box Brownies, it would be fascinating to try them out again.

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    1. Yes, it would be fascinating to see the results, although I think that one has to be careful because the films of today (or should I say, when you can find them) are far more sensitive than they were when the original Box Brownies were produced. I've been thinking about buying one of the many second-hand ones available on eBay to see if I can get it working and try it out. One of the many projects that I've had ideas for ...

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  16. Thanks for the great research about cameras and photography. As usual a very interesting blog.

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    1. Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment, Liz. Feedback is always appreciated.

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