History of Photography | The Consumer Age of Photography

The Consumer Age of Photography

Kodak's humble invention, the roll of film.

In this lesson, we'll discuss the coming of age of photography in the 20th century.

As we'll see, the invention of roll film and later color processes by a little company called Kodak turned photography on its head, accelerating the growing popularity of the medium.

We'll also explore some new genres of photography that became more important in the 20th century ranging from scientific experiments, war and news photography, to street photography.

In this lecture, you can expect to:

Learn how the invention of roll film spurred a consumer age in photography.
Explore how photography was used for science.
Explore how photography was used to communicate truth.
Examine the emergence of street photography.





 

Kodak changed the world of photography with their introduction of lightweight and flexible film rolls in 1889.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Brownie camera expanded the market for photography because of its size, affordability, and convenience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6x6 refers to a 6cm by 6cm square negative. 6x9 is the same height but has a longer side of 9cm. 645 refers to 6cm x 4.5cm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern film types include black-and-white, color, infrared, and the less popular instant film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Polaroid produced its last pack of instant film in 2008.

 

 

Photography Comes of Age

 

A Company Called Kodak

As we learned in the last lesson, photography first became a craze in the 19th century through the popular demand for portraiture.

However, several factors still limited the spread of photography. Early photo processes were slow and cumbersome. At a minimum, you had a very large camera. Some setups required a mobile darkroom, large sheets of heavy and fragile glass, and special tools to compensate for the slow pace of the technique.

All this changed with Kodak's introduction of a lightweight and flexible roll film in 1889. Suddenly, photographers could shoot multiple exposures without having to change film holders or reload. A couple of years later, Kodak introduced a daylight-loading camera. This new camera technology allowed photographers to venture away from the darkroom.

The Brownie: the iPhone of its Era

This new convenience brought popularity to what was originally an awkward and expensive hobby. Over the next decade, cameras got smaller, lighter, and less expensive. In 1900, Kodak released the Brownie camera and photography exploded into popular culture.

This is the Brownie No. 1, a slightly updated version of the original Brownie camera. The No. 1 was released in 1901.

The Brownie was the iPhone of its era. Do you remember 2007 when Apple released the iPhone? The introduction of a smartphone with a high-quality camera suddenly made photography an accessible pastime for a large audience. Next came an explosion of selfies, apps, and microstock agencies.

Before the Brownie, photography captivated the upper classes. Only those with time and money could afford to enjoy a painstaking, expensive hobby. The introduction of the Brownie brought images to the working classes, to family vacations, and into homes. For only a dollar, anyone could invest in a full camera outfit; rolls of film only cost fifteen cents.

George Eastman, founder of Kodak, used the phrase, "You push the button, we do the rest!" to describe the accessibility of the new Brownie technology. Users shot a roll of film then shipped the camera back to Kodak for developing, printing, and reloading.

The story of Kodak is an inspiring one for all photographers. Read more about the history of Kodak at the company site.

Film Sizes

During the 20th century, companies like Kodak continued to innovate and produce new, better, or simply different ways of using rolls of film.

The original cameras and plates of the 19th century were large format, ranging from 4x5 inches to very large formats such as 20x30 inches. The introduction of roll film brought about the standardization of a medium format, usually 120mm. This format is still in use today and is sometimes referred to as: 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, or 645.

What is film? Medium format roll film usually consists of 3 parts: a spool, paper backing (which protects against exposure to light), and the plastic film. In modern roll film, you'll find numbers on the backing paper to tell you what exposure you are on and a sticky band reading "exposed" that seals the finished roll tight on itself.

In 1913, Ernst Leitz GmbH (which later became Leica Camera) introduced the 35mm film format. The 35mm format beat out other film formats that were popular at the time, including 110 film, 127 film, and others, and has remained popular for over 100 years.

A 35mm roll of film measures 24x36mm. The sprockets (holes along the edges) account for the deduction to get from 36mm to the "35mm" name.

35mm film was the basis for digital full frame sensors. A digital sensor is the electronic chip inside a digital camera that records light to create a photographic image, replacing the film found in traditional cameras. A full-frame sensor is approximately the size of one 35mm frame on a piece of 35mm film.

Full-frame digital cameras have this same sensor size, allowing the same relationship between lens focal lengths you'd expect in a 35mm film camera. Cropped sensor cameras have varied sizes, usually around 25x15mm, and correspondingly have different relationships to the focal lengths.

Many film types went in and out of fashion in the late 20th century.

Types of Film

Black-and-white film, made from a plastic base and a coating of silver that produces a monochromatic negative image, dominated film photography for much of the 20th century.

Color film was long in the making, only becoming widespread by the 1970s. Today, two types of color process exist. C-41 film is a color negative film that produces a negative image and E-6 film (aka slide film) creates a positive image.

A black-and-white negative on the left, with color negative (C-41) in the center, and color positive (E-6/slide) on the right.

Infrared film had an emulsion that was sensitive to the invisible infrared light spectrum. The unique effects made it a popular film among landscape photographers.

The left image is taken on traditional black-and-white film. The right is shot on infrared.
Notice the reversal of the sky (light to dark) and the trees (dark to light).

The 20th century saw some interesting detours in the realm of film technology, each enjoying popularity for a time. One of the very first roll films on the market, Nitrate film, was extremely flammable, leading to unfortunate accidents. Nitrate was phased out almost as soon as something new became available.

Instant film captured the attention of the masses until the emergence of digital photography technology. Instant film, often referred to as Polaroid photography, was a technology that produced a color print in a matter of minutes, right in front of your eyes.

Instant film became available with holders to fit many of the standard formats and in proprietary formats like 600 and SX-70. In its heyday, it was available in a range of black-and-white and color formats, ISO speeds, peel-apart, and all-in-one films (called Integral films).

Here you see the popular Polaroid 600 film, as well as some peel-apart formats like Type 55.

Although Polaroid doesn't produce instant film anymore, you can still find some made by Fuji and by The Impossible Project, a company that specializes in instant photography, but neither have the cult following or practical applications of the original. We'll talk more about instant films when we discuss experimental photography in our next lesson.

Other Improvements

While film size and type was improving in leaps and bounds, other changes were happening that revolutionized photography in more subtle ways. Changing emulsion technology led to film speeds increasing exponentially, eventually reaching as fast as 6400 ISO.

Internal camera workings were being refined and perfected as well, allowing for much quicker movements of the lens and shutter itself.

Without these modifications, many of the genres we'll discuss in the remainder of the lesson would not have been possible.


 

 

 

 

 

Science has long embraced photography for its ability to objectively record the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Muybridge's images provided the scientific and artistic communities a new understanding of human motion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though it's considered discriminatory today, eugenicists used science photography to compare human characteristics using composited photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paintings did not portray wars accurately because painters did not want to show the blood and gore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A halftone photograph is made up of dots that vary in size and distance from each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phony but realistic images existed long before the advent of Photoshop.

Photography As Science

From its inception, photography has been regarded as a truth teller, as an objective way to record the world. It is no surprise that science embraced the technology.

As shutter speed capabilities increased, scientific studies of movement came onto the scene.

Photographer and scientist, Eadweard Muybridge, did many studies as part of a project called Animal Locomotion, where he used stop-motion photography to view the physiology of movement. Capturing on film, both humans and animals during the 1880s, his work changed our fundamental understanding of walking, running, sitting, and other basic actions.

Harold Edgerton was another photographer/scientist who worked with movement. In the 1930s, he began a series of projects that used strobe lights, fast shutter speeds, and color film to capture events that occurred in a fraction of a second.

Throughout his career, Edgerton photographed bullets shot through apples over and over again.

Some genres of scientific photography have fallen out of favor just like the scientific theories they were based on.

Photographer Sir Francis Galton worked in eugenics, a field that studied and compared human differences, mapping out statistical patterns in an effort to identify flaws leading to crime, disease, and low intelligence. A field focused on the characteristics of certain races or classes and selective breeding to create improved humans is considered prejudiced and wrong today; at the time, his theories were accepted as fact.

In one study, Galton aimed to create a portrait of a "criminal type" using composite photos of known convicts.

Photography as a Teller of Truth

From its inception, photography was seen as an impartial recorder of truth. The rise of documentary photography placed it firmly within this realm. Printed and broadcast news evolved hand in hand with photography, as newspapers, magazines, and television took precedence over radio and text-only bulletins. Photographs were used to reinforce the authenticity of the printed word.

Let's look at some of the ways in which photographs were used to communicate the truth.

War Photography

Prior to the invention of photography, war was documented in the memories and writings of those who experienced it firsthand. Painters have painted war scenes since our cave painting days, but even the most graphic painting couldn't "take you there."

No matter how detailed or realistic it was, a war painting always, in some sense, idealized war or left out important details.

The Surrender of Breda, painted in 1635 by Diego Velazquez, is an example of how events of war reached the eye prior to photography. The painter's recreation of the war scene showed his side in a positive light. It's no wonder the public was hungry for the "truth" of photography.

Photographers Timothy O'Sullivan and Matthew Brady brought war to the public eye during the American Civil War. Suddenly, documentation of war became very real. Check out their work in the following narrated slideshow:

It's interesting to note that Matthew Brady ran the first of what many would consider to be a work-for-hire photo operation. In his portrait studios, and later during the Civil War, Brady employed a number of "assistants" or camera operators. These men would change the film plates, press the shutter, and even do shoots entirely without Brady. Brady had very poor vision but great business sense, so he produced and directed shoots without operating the camera.

The photographs are attributed to Matthew Brady himself, without giving credit to the man who actually took the picture. In the 1860s, only a generation after the birth of photography, Brady started a debate that is still going on today: Do you have to press the button to be the photographer?

Eddie Adams' photograph of a street execution during the Vietnam War in 1968.

Although war photographers can still be found on battlefields, much of modern-war photography is coverage of the aftermath, or of protests and demonstrations rather than outright armed engagements.

War photography in the future may involve drones and any sort of emerging techniques. In addition, the increasing use of social media has great impact on coverage and reach of photographs of war and social unrest.

You will find that war photographers were capturing images of every conflict since the birth of photography. There isn't a single aesthetic quality or goal, but overall, coverage of conflict usually pulls on your heart strings, works to shock, enrage, or scare you. It also incites hope and patriotism.

Some prominent war photographers include Eddie Adams, Larry Burrows, Robert Capa, Joe Rosenthal.

News and Print Photography

Because of the difficulty of reproducing them, Civil War images such as those we just saw by O'Sullivan and Brady, were relegated to galleries, personal collections, and the like. By the 1870s and 80s, however, this began to change with the advent of halftone printing, which was employed to reproduce photographs en masse for publication in newspapers and periodicals.

The halftone process converts an image into dots of varying gradations or color located closely together. When viewed up close, the dots are really all you see. When viewed from a distance, the dots disappear and an image comes into view.

The halftone image on the left is created by tiny dots, as you can see when magnified on the right.

Once there was a quick and affordable way to produce news images, the uses for such images proliferated. National Geographic Magazine set a gold standard in news photography right from its start in 1905, by developing an editorial policy that was heavily reliant on photography.

Throughout the years, National Geographic has covered everything from history to geography to human interest to natural world stories, gaining a reputation for groundbreaking photography along the way.

National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols' photo of Jane Goodall interacting with chimpanzees in Tanzania.

The official magazine for the National Geographic Society was really a first-of-its-kind science magazine for the non-scientist. A photo magazine for the non-photographer. It brought forward social and environmental issues that would otherwise have been hidden in a pre-Internet, even pre-TV, era.

National Geographic solidified the tie between impactful, eye-catching photography and the absorption of historic events into the consciousness. When much of the news was delivered via radio or black-and-white, half-tone images in the daily newspaper, National Geographic was bringing vibrant, relevant, and eventually color images to the public.

As with any news publication, the photographers at National Geographic change with each issue. They are all freelancers. There are, and were, many regular contributors, some of my favorites being Steve McCurry, Michael Nichols, Joel Sartore, and Reza Degahti.

Check out slideshow that features photos from National Geographic over the years:

Photographs also captured our worst moments. The Hindenburg explosion is thought to be the first disaster documented thoroughly in photos. Images of this and of other iconic historic moments like Hurricane Katrina, the Twin Towers, and monks in flames in the street during the Vietnam War are now part of the collective consciousness. History and photography are completely intertwined.

An image of the Hindenburg exploding in 1937.

Photography is a natural champion of social issues. Long before the movements for civil rights in the 1960s or for LGBT rights in the 1980s, photography was used to advocate for the poor during the Great Depression and to champion women's rights in the 1920s.

Spotlight on the FSA Photographers

As part of the New Deal in 1935, the government created a series of projects under the heading of Farm Security Administration (FSA). The goal was to reduce poverty during the Great Depression, especially in rural parts of the country. Under the slogan "Introducing America to Americans" the FSA sent photographers around the country to photograph the poor.

Although technically a propaganda piece commissioned by the government to show the necessity of the New Deal, the mission included instructions to capture Americans and the way they live, allowing the photographers to create a huge collection of photos now considered a work of art.

The Library of Congress lists the FSA photographers as: Esther Bubley, John Collier Jr., Marjory Collins, Jack Delano, Sheldon Dick, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Howard Lieberman, Edwin Locke, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, Edwin Rosskam, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Roy Stryker, John Vachon, and Marion Post Wolcott.

The following slideshow depicts those iconic images:

Fake News

If you think viral images of sharks, fake storms, or giant animals are things of our era, you are wrong. Victorian photography "proved" a number of things that in the end turned out to be hoaxes.

One popular example is an image created by two teenage girls in 1920. The two co-conspirators created a few photos of "fairies" that were examined by experts and determined to be legitimate. People were swept up in a flurry of belief in the supernatural. Even such notable persons as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, believed the photos to be real.

Frances Griffith and Elsie Wright photographed these fairies in 1920. It was nearly 1980 before the myth was debunked and the girls admitted to using paper cutouts in their exposures of the Cottingley Fairies.

Bayard in his staged suicide photo in 1840.

The photograph to the right showing a suicide was actually a staged self-portrait created by inventor Hippolyte Bayard in 1840. Claiming to be the inventor of photography, Bayard was upset that Daguerre took all the public attention for his invention.

As so he naturally staged this photo with this "suicide note" on the back: "The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you. As far as I know this indefatigable experimenter has been occupied for about three years with his discovery. The Government, which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself. Oh the vagaries of human life...!"

Street Photography

Street photography is different than other documentary photography in that much of it never reaches publication, and often was never intended to. You'll find street photography projects in galleries as often as you'll find them in editorial contexts. There have been countless anonymous street photographers who did beautiful work.

The definition of street photography is a loose one covering any public photography, be it urban or rural, with or without people in the shot. Also, street photography does not span a particular genre or include a certain aesthetic. Rather, it is about an idea, an aim to capture life as it rolls by. Early street photographers such as Charles Nègre and Eugene Atget (Paris) and Paul Martin (London) were chroniclers of the great cities.

 

 

     
Learn about modern and experimental trends in photography.
Learn about F295, a photography group dedicated to experimentation.
Explore some characteristics of fashion and advertising photography.
Examine some of the effects of the digital photography revolution.
 

Discussion
Share your thoughts and opinions on the consumer age of photography in the Discussion area.

Exercise
Create five photographs that reflect the genres you learned about in this lesson.