9 - Populist Activity and Pictorialism: Popular Involvement with Cheap and Mass Produced Cameras and Photographers with Artistic Aspirations

Summary

There was a dramatic increase in popular participation in photography at the end of the nineteenth century because of technical improvements largely due to one man, George Eastman (1854-1932). It could be said that Eastman was the epitome of the American entrepreneur. By his mid-teens he was earning a living as a bank clerk but soon quit to set up the Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, New York. He consistently made breakthroughs in technology and he was assisted in this by appointing the best people he could find. Eastman also introduced mass-production, but his greatest contribution to the popularisation of photography was a marketing idea. By offering a total package of camera, film and processing, Eastman eliminated at a stroke all the fuss and aggravation that had formerly been associated with photography. He also gave the world the name Kodak, a word he devised for the following reasons:

It was a purely arbitrary combination of letters, not derived in whole or part from any existing word, arrived at after a considerable search for a word that would answer all requirements for a trademark name. The principal of these were that it must be short; incapable of being mis-spelled so as to destroy its identity; must have a vigorous and distinctive personality; must meet the requirements of the various foreign trademark laws …