ABSTRACT
Since the invention of photorealistic documentation in the mid-19th century, capturing, printing, and replicating images has become essential to American culture and the American psyche. In the early years of cameras, this opportunity was reserved for professionals with extensive technical knowledge and those with the means to hire them. In 1900, Eastman Kodak introduced the $1 Brownie camera, thus sparking a shift toward amateur photography and democratizing the opportunity to document every life. Chapter 3 discusses how consumer market cameras offered the general population the opportunity to document their own lives. Consumer market cameras are inexpensive cameras that can be used by non-professional photographers with little technical expertise. As a technology, consumer market cameras were a major turning point in the transition from media consumers—whose value was defined by their ability to purchase and consume industry-generated content—into content producers. In this chapter, I describe how the opportunity to capture moments, reflect on moments, and share moments with others established a norm of imbuing everyday moments and one’s own perspective with value independent of industry gatekeepers. Consumer market camera practices and the associated psychological shifts would foreshadow the popularity of user-generated content in the 21st century.
