With the introduction of the first Brownie cam-
era in 1900, the final ingredient in the marketing of
mass photography fell into place: that is, photogra-
phy’s affordability to unprecedented numbers of
middle and working class people. Priced at $1.00
per camera plus $0.15 for the six exposure roll, the
Brownie sold some 100,000 units in the United
States and Britain during its first year on the market.
While Kodak, from the 1890s to the end of the
twentieth century, dominated family photography,
it was not entirely free of competition. Its chief
American rival was the long established Anthony
& Scovill Company (Ansco after 1907) that intro-
duced its own roll film camera in 1905—for which
it was promptly sued by Kodak for patent infringe-
ment. In Britain, Ilford Ltd., from the mid-1890s,
the most successful manufacturer of gelatin dry
plates outside the United States, turned to the pro-
duction of cameras and, in 1912, roll film. The
German corporation, Agfa (The Analine Manufac-
turing Corporation), a commercial dye manufac-
turer, began producing film in 1908 and cameras in
- In Japan, the Cherry portable camera was
first manufactured in 1903 by Knoishi Honten, the
forerunner of the Konica Corporation.i
These, like the majority of large photography
companies in the twentieth century, would continue
to follow Kodak’s lead in developing point-and-
shoot cameras as well as the film stocks and indus-
trial processing facilities to support them. Kodak
produced 125 models of the Brownie camera bet-
ween 1900 and 1970. While some of these went so
far as to offer bellows lens mounts, stereo exposures
and, later in the century, flash attachments, Kodak
never lost sight of the parameters of need and ac-
cessibility with which the original model was de-
signed. Even as the company diversified, it was
careful to maintain its dominance of the family
photography market. In 1963, with the introduc-
tion of the Instamatic line, Kodak once again em-
phasized simplicity of use, selling more than 50
million units prior to 1970.
The Instamatic was typical of second generation
point-and-shoot cameras in that it incorporated
artificial illumination and was designed to use color
film. Flashbulbs, first marketed in 1930, were com-
monplace in home photography in the post-World
War II period with 400 million sold in 1951 alone.
The Instamatic generation brought an even more
practical means for low light photography through
the integration of permanent flash units. Home use
of color film had become practical, though expen-
sive, with the Kodachrome and Agfacolor stocks
introduced in 1936. It wasn’t until after the Second
World War with the coming of Kodacolor, Ansco-
color, Ektachrome, and Fuji-color that color film
not only worked well in point-and-shoot cameras
but could be processed at competitive prices. By the
mid-1960s color had overtaken black and white as a
standard for family photography, a trend that con-
tinued with the subsequent introduction of ever-
faster color stocks.
Other innovations in second generation point-
and-shoot cameras owed their origin to the rede-
sign and popularization of 35 mm photography by
a number of Japanese companies beginning in the
mid-1950s. The Japanese researchers used 35 mm
as the platform on which features such as the single
lens reflex optics, automatic exposure control, au-
tomatic focusing, motorized zoom lenses, and mo-
torized film advance were adapted for general
use—including, by the 1960s, use in less expensive
family formats.iiBy the 1980s, cartridge-loaded 35
mm cameras with these features were being sold to
family photographers as slightly upscale versions of
point-and-shoot cameras.
Other alternatives to the basic family camera
proved less successful. The Polaroid Land camera,
with its self-developing film, was introduced in- The first Polaroids were relatively expensive,
complicated, and produced prints that compared
badly to those of conventional cameras. Polaroid
improved its technology, introducing color with its
Swinger camera in 1962. Its 1972 SX-70 system
provided an integrated electronic flash, simplified
focusing, and multi-exposure film packs. In the
1990s, Polaroid introduced smaller, less expensive
cameras aimed at a youth market. It also empha-
sized the visual record keeping function of its tech-
nology. However, Polaroid’s family photography
division suffered from the spread of one-hour
photo processing labs in the 1970s, disposable cam-
eras in the 1980s, and digital photography in the last
decade of the century.
Towards the end of the twentieth century, these
last two innovations looked to both the past and the
future in their contributions to the reinvention of
family photography. Fuji’s ‘‘utsurundesu’’ (film
with lens), the single use (or disposable) camera,
introduced in 1986, reiterated Kodak’s 1888 idea
of returning the camera to the processor along
with its film. These small cardboard box cameras,
only marginally more expensive than the roll of
color film they contained, were soon available
wherever film was sold. Fuji’s sale of a million
single use cameras in six months led to the rapid
development of other manufacturers’ models. Sin-
gle use cameras were soon available with built in
flash, panoramic lens, telephoto lenses, or with
plastic shells that allowed them to be used under-
FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY