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The advertising campaigns launched by Kodak in the early
years of snapshot photography stand at the center of a shift
in American domestic life that goes deeper than
technological innovations in cameras and film. Before the
advent of Kodak advertising in 1888, writes Nancy Martha
West, Americans were much more willing to allow sorrow into
the space of the domestic photograph, as evidenced by the
popularity of postmortem photography in the mid-nineteenth
century. Through the taking of snapshots, Kodak taught
Americans to see their experiences as objects of nostalgia,
to arrange their lives in such a way that painful or
unpleasant aspects were systematically erased.
West looks at a wide assortment of Kodak's most popular
inventions and marketing strategies, including the "Kodak
Girl," the momentous invention of the Brownie camera in
1900, the "Story Campaign" during World War I, and even the
Vanity Kodak Ensemble, a camera introduced in 1926 that came
fully equipped with lipstick.
At the beginning of its campaign, Kodak advertising
primarily sold the fun of taking pictures. Ads from this
period celebrate the sheer pleasure of snapshot
photography--the delight of handling a diminutive camera, of
not worrying about developing and printing, of capturing
subjects in candid moments. But after 1900, a crucial shift
began to take place in the company's marketing strategy. The
preservation of domestic memories became Kodak's most
important mission. With the introduction of the Brownie
camera at the turn of the century, the importance of home
began to replace leisure activity as the subject of ads, and
at the end of World War I, Americans seemed desperately to
need photographs to confirm familial unity.
By 1932, Kodak had become so intoxicated with the power
of its own marketing that it came up with the most bizarre
idea of all, the "Death Campaign." Initiated but never
published, this campaign based on pictures of dead loved
ones brought Kodak advertising full circle. Having launched
one of the most successful campaigns in advertising history,
the company did not seem to notice that selling a painful
subject might be more difficult than selling momentary
pleasure or nostalgia.
Enhanced with over 50 reproductions of the ads
themselves, 16 of them in color, Kodak and the Lens of
Nostalgia vividly illustrates the fundamental changes in
American culture and the function of memory in the formative
years of the twentieth century.
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"Thoroughly researched and genuinely interdisciplinary,
this engaging study of the history and evolution of Kodak's
advertisements will appeal to anyone interested in snapshot
photography, in advertising and more generally in American
culture. An enjoyable and informative book!"
--Marianne G. Hirsch, Dartmouth College
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