433
regarded as inexpensive cameras were inexpensive only
if one expected to recoup their cost by working as a
professional photographer.
Technological solutions to these problems began in
earnest with Bolton and Sace’s development of dry col-
lodion in 1864, followed three years later by Johanna
Baptist Obernetter’s commercial manufacture of silver
chromide paper. In 1878, Charles Bennet described a
means of mass producing the gelatin dry plates devel-
oped by Richard Maddox eight years before. The result
was that, by the early 1880s, it became increasingly
possible to take photographs with the assurance of pre-
mixed, standardized chemistry.
The demand for mass-produced gelatin dry plates
provided a strong incentive for the further development
of non-professional photography. Throughout the 1880s,
George Eastman and his collaborators (most notably,
William H. Walker, F.M. Cossett and Frank Brownell)
made what was arguably the most determined effort
to develop the mass production of multiple exposure
fi lm stock and simplifi ed cameras. From the beginning,
Eastman targeted his protect at a potential mass market
of amateur photographers (with the deliberately stated
inclusion of women and children). His 1888 Kodak
camera defi ned not only consumer photography but also
the consumer photographer. In one of the more profound
statements of the second industrial revolution, “you
take the picture, we do the rest” Eastman separated the
photographer from the means of production and from
any necessity to understand the process that yielded what
was, nevertheless, a personalized object.
It was not until Kodak’s 1895 Pocket Model camera
or even the appearance of the fi rst Brownie in 1900 that
the potential of universally accessible photography was
fully realized. But even as these fi nal improvements
were made— the introduction of the fi lm cartridge, a bet-
ter shutter and a much-reduced price— the rise of mass
photography was becoming manifest. In 1893, Ernst
W. Juhl, founder of the Society for the Advancement
of Amateur Photography, organized the fi rst exhibition
of amateur photographs at the Hamburg Kunsthalle, an
event that showed some six thousand images. Kodak’s
mushrooming sales as well as those of its many imita-
tors increased to the point where, at the 1900 ExpositionUnknown. Mr. and Mrs. Tennent, Mrs.
Yates, Mrs. Brandram.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith
Foundation Gift, 1995 (1995.309)
Image © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art.