Jones Shot on a Graflex D with Super-XX film and flash. To boys and girls beginning to think of themselves as young men and women.” “Snap as many youngsters as you want,” read an ad in the sensational Sunday supplement The American Weekly, “from babies In each state and Canadian province for the best child and baby pictures. In March and April, “special $100 prizes” were given to photographers Were a selling point, whether the actress Ethel Barrymore, the New York-based photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston or Kenneth Wilson Williams, a “photography expert” and the editor of the Eastman Kodak-published magazine Kodakery.Ĭhildren were a major theme - the likely reason a portrait of a baby was chosen to win what would now equate to more than $30,000. Kodak placed ads on the radio and in major magazines - from The Saturday Evening Post to Ladies’ Home Journal - as well as in 17 Sunday papers (though not in The New York Times). The photographer, who lived in Waverley, Mass., won a $5 prize. Stevens Shot with a Graflex on Tri-X Film. “Greatly Increased Profits for YOU!” read a pamphlet given to retailers.į. Retailers were given colorful window streamers The company told its retailers that every prize, from the grand to the $5, would stimulate sales of cameras, film and photo finishing. It is a New York City with no Empire State Building a time when milk was delivered in glass bottles and families gathered Now, it is a glimpse of (overwhelmingly white, middle-class) life just before the crash of 1929. Kodak advertised aggressively for its 1929 picture contest, spending hundreds of thousands to encourage “fortunate amateurs” to take part. Nancy Martin, a University of RochesterĪrchivist and Rochester Collections librarian, says she believes the first contest was the company’s effort to “start cameras working and keep them working.” Two are from 1929, and two more from the ’30s and early ’40s. Few peopleĪside from the occasional student or researcher have seen the albums. The library acquired the Kodak collections almost eight years ago, when Kodak - now under bankruptcy protection and trying to rebound - handed over millions of pages of documents and photographs. While picture contests were national - and later international - there was no shortage of submissions from New York City. The Eastman Kodak Company’s headquarters are in Rochester, N.Y.
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