Kodak: The 20th century in Cameras and Advertising

With Liz and Buster
(Keaton, That Is)
by Ria Ryne

Kodaks everywhere. Big Kodaks, little Kodaks, your first Kodak, your Grandfather's first Kodak--they were all there, in spirit if not in fact, as Liz Whitaker was our tour guide on a trip down Kodak's Memory Lane. As impressive as the wide variety of cameras was, equally intriguing was the broad array of advertising materials on display.
Looking at the history of Kodak allows not only a look at the history of photography in this country, but also glimpses at fashion as well as significant events in world history. As an example of the latter, in 1892 a Kodak camera accompanied Peary to the North Pole.

The early Kodaks for the amateur photographer took advantage of George Eastman's pioneering work in developing a flexible film base, which eliminated the necessity of using cumbersome glass plates. Photography became accessible to non-photographers, to people who just wanted to take some photos on a picnic or a vacation.
Folding cameras, an even more convenient form, began appearing around 1890, the Brownie made its debut in 1900. As in indication of how popular these Kodak cameras were: around 1,750,000 Vest Pocket Autographic were sold.
The first 35mm cameras, (or as they were referred to then- "miniatures"), developed to utilize the film that was being produced for motion pictures, came on the scene in the 1930's.
The Kodak Retina series, still popular with shooters and collectors alike, was launched in 1934-35 with the original Retina (Type 117) and continued until 1960's when the Model S2 was the last of the line.
The Medalist, a photographic handful is ever there was one, the myriad 127 roll film Brownie cameras that were the first cameras for legions of budding photographers. (My first was a Brownie Starmite II, Christmas 1963. I still have it. I still shoot with it.) Who could forget the ubiquitous Instamatics? The ill-fated foray into the instant photo domain staked out by Polaroid?
So many cameras, so little time.

The presentation wound up with a film featuring Buster Keaton, the Great Stone Face himself, struggling through the ages to take a photo of his beloved, and stay out of the way of his beloved's Mother. I am sure that most in the audience could empathize with his photographic problems as well as his difficulties with his incipient mother-in-law. Click Here to Read More!

Tandy Leather Factory Opens Retail Store in Tucson

Tandy Leather Factory, Inc. announced today that it is opening a new retail store in Tucson. Tandy Leather has possibly the largest array of leather available for camera repair and restoration in an accessible retail location. The new store is located at 6061 East Broadway Boulevard, Suite 118, between Craycroft and Wilmot and is open for business as of today.
Chief Executive Officer, Ron Morgan, commented, “We are excited to be opening a Tandy Leather retail store in Tucson. It should be a nice compliment to our Leather Factory wholesale store located approximately six miles away. We have a solid retail customer base in the Tucson area and believe we can expand that base with a local store. Krystal Wright will be managing the new store. She has been training in our Austin store for six months under one of our best training managers and has several years of customer service experience in the retail industry. I have no doubt that she will do well managing her own store.”

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John Thomson, Photographer (1837-1921) (Part One)

copyright 2008 R. A. Suomala

King Mongut of Siam






The August 2008 issue of the magazine Architectural Digest contained an article entitled "China, Cultural Reflections". The article featured some of the work of 19th century photographer John Thomson. His remarkable images from 1868-1872 showed a China previously unknown to most of the rest of the world.

I only read the Architectural Digest intermittently but my wife, Sally, reads it more often. Most of the articles are very interesting albeit picturing things that are usually way beyond desires or prudent economic inclinations. Sally called my attention to the article mentioned above. However reading the somewhat abbreviated facts regarding Thomson's life left me wanting to know more. Here is a somewhat condensed version of what I learned about Thomson's life and photographs. And here is the rest of it. John Thomson was born in Edinburgh in 1837, the son of a tobacconist. This also being the year of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne and the golden age of the British Empire, Thomson was in every sense a true Victorian.

In the early 1850's Thomson was apprenticed to a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer where he learned the principles of photography. Thomson completed his apprenticeship in the 1858 having concurrently attended classes at the Watt Institution and School of Arts where he received the "Attestation of Proficiency" in Natural Philosophy in 1857 and Mathematics and Chemistry in 1858.

In April 1862, Thomson left Edinburgh for Singapore. Initially, he established a joint business with his older brother, William, to manufacture optical and nautical instruments.

In 1863 Thomson established a studio and photographed many of the merchants that lived in and traveled to Singapore. These included according to Thompson “descendants of early Portuguese voyagers, Chinese, Malays, Parsees, Arabs, Armenians, Klings, Bengalees and Negroes from Africa". Thomson soon discovered that more interesting subjects lay outside the studio in the streets and countryside. To this end he equipped himself with a small stereoscopic cameras and a variety of large plate cameras (some contact prints were as large as 14X19 and were probably not full frame) and traveled from 1865 to 1868 to Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam.


The King of Siam was photographed by Thomson. This of course was the same King who engaged the English governess Anna Leonowens the inspiration for the musical play The King and I.


Thomson remained in Siam for 6 months photographing every aspect of the country and people before moving on to Cambodia.

Traveling in Cambodia by boat was not all that pleasant according to Thomson who noted that " Every brush of our oars brought forth myriads of mosquitoes------blood thirsty assailants kept torturing us-----they even swarmed in our mosquito nets, under which we vainly endeavored to sleep". When one of the buffalo carts overturned ruining much of the food supply Thomson, also suffering from a raging fever came across a shrine and two fragmentary "idols" which was his first glimpse of what we now know as Angkor Wat. At the request of the King of Siam, Thomson made a photographic record of ruins including the ruined ancient city that surrounded the temple.

In 1866 Thomson returned to Edinburgh hoping to establish a reputation for himself at the Royal Geographic Society that would hopefully result in some recognition and perhaps even some income. His work was highly praised by a critic in The British Journal of Photography. He found a publisher for an album of the Cambodian photographs. This came out as a very small edition as it was illustrated with actual photographic prints and not printed reproductions.

Returning to the Far East in 1867 Thomson spent three months in Vietnam before moving to Hong Kong. Thomson had met his future wife, Isobel Petrie, in Edinburgh in 1866 and they were married in Hong Kong in 1867. For the next four years Thomson traveled up and down the coast of China venturing inland on some of the many rivers that flow down to the sea.

Bear in mind that all of Thomson's photographs were taken using wet plates. Glass plates and chemicals had to be shipped in by sea from distant sources. His equipment had to be able to stand up to a very humid, tropical environment. In an 1866 article for The British Journal of Photography Thomson wrote " Glass plates have been a fertile source of annoyance to me while in the East ---- When I opened the box I found every glass----useless." and " --a Coolie of artistic taste and oily fingers had ------lifted out each negative-----left two indelible thumb prints (sic) on each--".

By 1870 Thomson had traveled North to Foochow, the river Min and Formosa.


While in Foochow Thomson photographed all levels of the social scale. This included criminals, lepers and beggars. His sensitivity to the lives and misfortunes of others was to become a strong influence on his later work when he moved to London. Part 2 of this article will treat this in more detail.


References:
1. China The Land And Its People,
Early Photographs By John Thomson
(First published in 1873)
ISBN 962 7015 02 4

Notes:
1. This picture was included in a book entitled Foochow and the River Min published by Thomson in 1873. A recent auction by Sothebys in NY saw an original copy of the book going for $180,000. Click Here to Read More!

Paul Garrett Recognized

At this year’s WPHS Christmas Party Paul Garrett was recognized for his many years of dedicated service to the WHPS with a beautiful, engraved pen set. President Rick Soloway said in his remarks preceding the annual gift exchange that "Paul Garrett has been the glue that has helped bond the Western Photographic Historical Society together”. Congratulations Paul. Click Here to Read More!

At the Center for Creative Photography

Oh l'amour: Contemporary Photography from the Stéphane Janssen Collection
November 22 — March 1, 2008

Love — l'amour — is one of art's enduring themes. From classical antiquity to contemporary America, this profound idea, both abstract and physical, has inspired collectors as well as creators. Stéphane Janssen, Belgian by birth and resident in Arizona, is one such collector. Beginning with a love of art that emerged in his teenage years, Janssen went on to assemble an extensive and entirely unique collection that includes almost every creative medium: painting, ceramics, photography, and more. For this exhibition, Janssen generously shares a group of contemporary photographs that reflect his vision as a patron. Sharing elements of fantasy and physicality, exuberance and emotion, these photographs — by artists such as Philip Lorca diCorcia, Sally Mann, Duane Michals, Vik Muniz, and Spencer Tunick, among others — depict love in myriad forms and guises.
The Center for Creative Photography is located in the Fine Arts complex in the northwest corner of the University of Arizona campus, between the Architecture and Harvill buildings. Convenient pay parking is available at the Park Avenue Garage on the northeast corner of Park and Speedway, with direct access to the Center’s front door via a pedestrian underpass. The Center is near several Sun Tran bus routes.
Image Credit:
Anthony Goicolea. Window Washers, 2001. Color c-print. Collection of Stéphane Janssen. © Anthony Goicolea.
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Some Camera Designs of Arthur Crapsey, Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Loewy

by Rick Soloway and Ralph London
During our exploration into the cameras that famed industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague designed [5], we were tentatively speculating that he may have designed Kodak cameras such as the Brownie Hawkeye, Bantam RF, Chevron and perhaps the Ponys and Signets. Soon our search for Kodak postwar photographic design patents demonstrated to us that Teague had designed none of these cameras. The search also revealed who did.
Teague was certainly involved with Kodak at the time. A former Kodak designer, Arthur Crapsey, Jr. recalls, “In 1946 or 1947 Teague was retained as consultant to the Industrial Design Group being formed under Ted Clement” that already included Crapsey. Fred Knowles and Ken Van Dyck soon joined. Through at least 1958, “Teague was visiting us on a regular basis two to six times a year.” [2] We suggested that Teague might have helped or inspired other designers to create postwar designs.

So if Teague did none of the designs, who did, with or without Teague’s inspiration? Clement started with a 1947 design patent filing for the Tourist. From 1948 to 1958 Crapsey produced a long list of design patents: Brownie Hawkeye, Pony 828, Pony 135, Signet 35, Brownie Holiday, Brownie Bull’s-Eye, Bantam RF, Kodak Stereo, Signet 40, Brownie Starflex, Brownie Starlet, Brownie Flash 20, Signet 50, Pony II (with Frank Zagara), Signet 80, Brownie Starmatic (with Mary Eaton) and the Automatic 35. Crapsey might also have done the 1953 Chevron. Richard Olson and Zagara created the Brownie Super 27 in 1962, and the same year Olson did a camera similar to the Brownie Fiesta. Zagara is responsible for the Instamatic 100, 500 and 300, and Olson the Instamatic 700, all filed on February 14, 1963. Finally, David Hansen has a design patent for an Instamatic filed in 1963. Hansen wrote us, “Arthur Crapsey and Fred Knowles were the industrial designers for the Star line of cameras.” [4] A table of detailed information on these design patents is available from the authors.

Actually, we found no evidence of specific Teague camera designs for Kodak after 1944. Some people might quickly decide that a few of these postwar designs were done by Teague himself. Several websites incorrectly credit the Brownie Hawkeye to Teague. It is noteworthy that in all of our patent searches (which covered 1926 to 1965), Mary
Eaton is the only woman we discovered on a design patent, and this Starmatic patent is her only patent. At Kodak she replaced Gloria Baldwin.

Teague’s camera designs were not limited to Kodak. Teague also played a major role in the early design of the Polaroid Land Cameras. Design patents cosigned by Teague involve the Polaroid Model 95 in 1948, the Highlander Model 80 from 1954, and the 1960 Electric-Eye 900, the first fully automatic Polaroid.

Teague is sometimes discussed together with three other famous contemporary industrial designers: Henry Dreyfuss, Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes, the first two of whom also designed cameras. Dreyfuss is credited with the design of the 1963 Polaroid Automatic 100 and the 1973 SX-70, the latter design more specifically credited to James M. Connor of Henry Dreyfuss Associates and Edwin Land himself. The SX-70 “was to be the last product worked on by Henry Dreyfuss (1904-1972) before his untimely death.” Henry Dreyfuss Associates also designed the 1965 Model 20 (the Swinger) and the 1976 Pronto. [3] For Ansco, Dreyfuss did the Automatic Reflex (design patent 157,847), the Pioneer or Chief (121,408), and packaging including the red, white and dark blue design. Loewy also designed for Ansco and is credited with the Anscoflex, Flash Clipper outfit, Rediflex outfit, 2A Home Developing outfit and the luggage style case for the Pioneer (Ansco Jr. Press outfit). [6] The British Purma Special is a 1937 Loewy design. [1] We found no relevant effort by Bel Geddes.

References

1. Patrick Cook and Catherine Slessor, Bakelite: Illustrated Guide to Collectible Bakelite Objects, Chartwell Books, 1992.

2. Arthur Crapsey, Jr., Transcription dated May 10, 1988 of handwritten notes in response to request to summarize the history of industrial design at Kodak, 2 pages.

3. Carroll Gantz, 100 Years of Design, Industrial Design Society of America website. http://new.idsa.org/webmodules/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=51&z=23

4. David Hansen, email, March 15, 2006.

5. Ralph London and Rick Soloway, “Walter Dorwin Teague: Master American Camera Design,” Symposium on the History of Photography, PhotoHistory XIII, Rochester, N.Y., October 20-22, 2006. Also “Camera Designs of Walter Dorwin Teague,” Photographic Canadiana, The Photographic Historical Society of Canada, 2006, to appear.

6. William and Estelle Marder, Anthony: The Man, the Company, the Cameras, Pine Ridge Publishing, 1982. [Loewy is indexed as “Lowey.”]

Rick Soloway (ricksoloway@hotmail.com), born and raised in Detroit, graduated from Wayne State University with a concentration of study in the History of Science. Since graduation, he has been a commercial photographer specializing in images for the biomedical sciences. His work has been published in numerous medical journals, textbooks and atlases. Rick's collecting interests include streamline/deco era camera designs as well as compact, miniature and subminiature cameras. Now living in Tucson, he is treasurer and a member of the board of directors of the Western Photographic Historical Society.

Member Ralph London (London@imagina.com) collects mainly early wood and brass cameras from the 1840s to the early 1900s plus the catalogs and ads in which they appear. He and wife Bobbi have many of Teague’s cameras. A retired computer scientist living in Portland, Oregon, he contributes frequently to photo history publications. For many years he edited the Cascade Panorama for the Cascade Photographic Historical Society. He also maintains an extensive topical collection of postage stamps on cameras and photography.
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Volunteer Photography Mentors Needed!

VOICES: Community Stories Past and Present, Inc. is looking for photographers to work with Tucson youth in a dynamic and creative environment. The 110º After-School Magazine Project provides 30 low-income, high-school-aged youth the opportunity to publish self-driven, personal and community stories in the magazine 110º - Tucson's Youth Tell Tucson's Stories. We are looking for energetic, passionate, self-motivated, and responsible adults to mentor the magazine's youth staff on a weekly basis. Volunteers are an invaluable asset to our magazine project and we need your help finding these qualified individuals.

Volunteers mentor youth in writing, researching, interviewing, photography, editing, professional development, and life skills. We require volunteers to commit to a minimum of 2 hours every week from October 6, 2007 through May 14, 2009. Youth staff work from 4-6:15pm, Monday through Thursday and volunteer mentoring during these hours is key to the success of our program.

Volunteers must be comfortable using collaborative mentoring techniques with youth ages 14-21. In a collaborative mentoring setting, mentors focus on engaging the youth staff in dialogue and critical thinking. Volunteers present their professional skills and knowledge as accessible resources.

If you are interested, please contact Photography Director Krista Niles at krista@voicesinc.org or 520.622.7458, ext. 310.

For more information, please visit our web site at www.voicesinc.org.
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