Kodak Photography - A Simple, Fascinating and Interesting Pursuit for All: Kodak’s Marketing of Camera Ownership and Snapshooting to Women in Britain
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 12:00 PM
Description
Dr. Jayne Knight, Photography Historian and Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Design History, University of Brighton, United Kingdom
‘Kodak Photography - A Simple, Fascinating and Interesting Pursuit for All’: Kodak’s Marketing of Camera Ownership and Snapshooting to Women in Britain
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) in 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.
Dr. Jayne Knight is a photographic historian and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Brighton’s Centre for Design History. She recently completed an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD with the University of Brighton and the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford which examined how the Kodak Museum Collection was used to tell the story of popular photography in a national museum setting. This produced a comprehensive history of the Kodak Museum Collection and a new historiography of British photography in a museum context which is being developed further through the fellowship. Jayne has worked with photographic collections across several museums and archives and has wider research interests in Kodak, popular photography and institutional histories.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Knight, Jayne, "Kodak Photography - A Simple, Fascinating and Interesting Pursuit for All: Kodak’s Marketing of Camera Ownership and Snapshooting to Women in Britain" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 35.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/35
Kodak Photography - A Simple, Fascinating and Interesting Pursuit for All: Kodak’s Marketing of Camera Ownership and Snapshooting to Women in Britain
Dr. Jayne Knight, Photography Historian and Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Design History, University of Brighton, United Kingdom
‘Kodak Photography - A Simple, Fascinating and Interesting Pursuit for All’: Kodak’s Marketing of Camera Ownership and Snapshooting to Women in Britain
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) in 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.
Dr. Jayne Knight is a photographic historian and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Brighton’s Centre for Design History. She recently completed an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD with the University of Brighton and the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford which examined how the Kodak Museum Collection was used to tell the story of popular photography in a national museum setting. This produced a comprehensive history of the Kodak Museum Collection and a new historiography of British photography in a museum context which is being developed further through the fellowship. Jayne has worked with photographic collections across several museums and archives and has wider research interests in Kodak, popular photography and institutional histories.
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