Kodak Girl

This book tells the remarkable story of the Kodak Girl, one of the most durable and successful marketing campaigns in advertising history. Created by George Eastman, inventor of the inexpensive hand-held camera, the Kodak Girl traces the intersection of American culture with photography as it evolved from a studio-bound practice to a snapshot obsession for the masses. Martha Cooper's extensive collection of Kodak Girl material ranges from advertising, by Kodak and other camera manufacturers, to photographs from all periods, engravings, trading cards, matchbooks as well as commemorative stamps and Valentine's Days cards. This rich collection considers the relationship of the Kodak Girl to the birth of the snapshot during the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and is accompanied by two essays on the seminal role of women - on both sides of the camera - in photography's early history. John P. Jacob is director of the Inge Morath Foundation in New York City. He was director of the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University from 1992 to 2000, and an independent curator before that. His recent books for Steidl include Inge Morath: First Color (2009) and Man Ray: Trees + Flowers - Insects Animals (2009). Martha Cooper is a photographer who has collected images of women with cameras for over thirty years. Best known for her photographs of urban graffiti art, Cooper's book Subway Art (1984) with co-author Henry Chalfant, has been described by the New York Times as the movement's "bible and epitaph". Cooper's first camera was a Baby Brownie Special. She lives in Manhattan, where she is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture.