the Kodak Girl and camera – Jan 1920 ad
Toronto. That persistent seeker of photo history, George Dunbar, spotted these ads by Kodak while browsing issues of Popular Science.
George thought it interesting that Kodak chose to feature a young lady carrying an autographic Kodak camera in its January 1920 ad while three decades later, the far larger company chose to feature the darkroom equipment it manufactured and sold, all in the interest of selling films, chemicals and paper devoted to amateur photography.
By January, 1950 the use of women in ads was very common, so perhaps Kodak, then well established, chose intentionally to feature products it and instead to attract the burgeoning amateur market. In any case a short time later it became unwise to feature the fair sex in advertising.
NB, The title of this post is a riff one one of Charles Dickens’s book titles, “A Tale of Two Cities“.
