‘Kodak Photography - a simple, fascinating and interesting pursuit for all’: Kodak’s marketing of camera ownership and snapshooting to women in Britain.

Description

This paper was presented at the 2025 Women of Photography Conference-a-Thon on International Women's Day organised by Dr. Kris Belden-Adams and Dr. Rose Teanby

The Kodak Museum Collection (KMC), collected by industry leader Kodak and displayed since 1989 at what is now known as the National Science and Media Museum (NSMM), Bradford, represents over a century of film-based photographic technology and apparatus, alongside photographs, advertising material and ephemera. These latter collections, originating from both the company itself and from the museum’s donors, provide an insight into how industry leader Kodak marketed photography to broaden its customer base in Britain, including women, who they encouraged to pick up a camera and capture family, holidays and happy memories.

Drawing upon examples from the KMC, including marketing material, magazine advertisements, competition entries and snapshot albums by women photographers, I examine how British Kodak tailored American Kodak marketing campaigns to encourage more women photographers, how this shaped the type of photographs produced and how this has been interpreted by the NSMM in its Kodak Gallery, where Kodak’s marketing campaigns focusing on women have been utilised to tell part of the story of popular photography for museum visitors.

Period	8 Mar 2025
Event title	Women of Photography
Event type	Conference