photograph is taken of you) has become essential to
the celebration of holidays, birthdays, weddings, and
vacations. And the snapshot that marked a signifi-
cant event and a bond among its participants in the
moment of its production, later circulated through a
defined network of friends or family, further empha-
sizes the intimacy between those individuals. As an
image that derives meaning from the quotidian cul-
tural rituals that surround its production and con-
sumption, the snapshot is not only the largest single
vernacular genre, but it also epitomizes the nature of
the photograph in vernacular modes.
While the desire to produce likenesses of family
members and loved ones predates the invention of
photography, the origin of the snapshot is generally
agreed to have occurred in 1888, when George East-
man first introduced his Kodak No. 1 camera. And
while vernacular photographic traditions go back to
early daguerreotypey, the Kodak camera revolutio-
nized the relation of the general public to photogra-
phy. This small box camera was easy to use,
requiring no photographic expertise. It was also
lightweight and the fast lens and high film speed
did not require the use of a tripod, making the
camera highly portable. And Eastman made the
camera inexpensive enough to tempt a general user-
ship far broader than the customary demographic of
professionals, camera hobbyists, and skilled ama-
teurs. But perhaps the most important selling point
for the Kodak No. 1 is epitomized in the famous
slogan ‘‘You press the button, we do the rest.’’ Each
Kodak No. 1 came preloaded with a roll of paper
film containing 100 exposures. Once the roll was
exposed, the entire camera was sent to the factory
for processing and was returned loaded with a fresh
roll of film and 100 two-and-a-half-inch circular
prints. By separating the act of taking a picture
from the more complicated chemical processes of
developing and printing film, Eastman made possi-
ble a truly vernacular form of photographic produc-
tion. Over the next 12 years, Eastman’s refinements
on the Kodak camera design, from the introduction
of celluloid roll film and daylight loading film car-
tridges, to larger prints and smaller camera sizes,
helped to popularize vernacular photographic prac-
tices in the United States and Great Britain.
But perhaps no camera better epitomized the
transformation in attitudes towards photographic
practice in the early days of this emerging genre
than the Brownie camera, first introduced in 1900.
With a cost of one dollar and a design so simple a
child could use it, the Brownie is often hailed as the
camera that made photography a truly democratic
medium. The childlike simplicity of the camera
mechanism seemed to reflect a new degree of honesty
and purity in photographic expression (and played a
formative role in the association of the snapshot with
a form of photographic innocence as discussed
above). In its first year alone, over 100,000 Brownie
cameras were sold, adding to the estimated 1.5 mil-
lion roll film cameras already in use at that time.
With inexpensive cameras available to practically
any man, woman, or child who might want one,
photography found a new role in the domain of the
everyday. Early snapshot cameras allowed a new
breed of photographers to experiment with their
own individual approaches to photography, captur-
ing scenes of daily life for no other reason than
personal significance or whim. No longer limited to
the confines and formalities of the portrait studio,
these early technologies put cameras into the hands
of wholly unskilled photographers and provided
them with the agency to create exploratory, sponta-
neous, and frivolous photographic images. Thus
while the history of image making from the earliest
portrait points to desire as a contributing factor in
the generation of vernacular photographic culture, it
would be difficult to imagine the existence of verna-
cular photography today without the influence of
Kodak’s technological innovations. So often defined
by its carefree, intimate, and impulsive nature, the
snapshot would have been impossible if the photo-
grapher had not been freed from the cumbersome
camera and tripod, the lengthy exposure, and the
technical and chemical complexity of developing
and printing film.
Kodak’s influence in the formative years of the
snapshot genre extends beyond the production of
camera equipment and the processing of film. As
West argues, Kodak advertising played an important
role in defining how snapshot cameras could and
should be used. By tying the activity of ‘‘Kodaking’’
into popular industries such as leisure, toys, and
fashion, the company made the Kodak camera an
essential appliance for every home. But beyond
increasing the popularity of their products, West
argues, Kodak revised basic cultural perceptions of
photographic meaning by injecting the cachet of nos-
talgia into the personal photographic image. In
marked contrast to the longstanding tradition of
postmortem photography and even to earlier Ko-
dak marketing campaigns that billed the snapshot
camera as a necessary accessory to outdoor leisure
activities, Kodak’s marketing breakthrough recast
the photograph as a vital, sentimental record of the
past. This new photographic ideal encouraged the
erasure of anything negative (death, sorrow) and
the affirmation of the positive through representation
and reproduction. Thus, Kodak is largely responsible
for the present culture of snapshot photography thatVERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHY