ABSTRACT
Snapshot cameras were derived from so-called “detective” cameras, a form of hand-held, often hidden, camera introduced in the late nineteenth century to facilitate the surreptitious taking of photographs. With the introduction of one product, Eastman had transformed photography from a practice into a “system,” using methods of standardisation, mass manufacture, and mass marketing that eventually brought the medium into the hands of people in their millions. In fact, the photographer’s shadow is ubiquitous in personal snapshots; virtually everyone who has taken a snapshot has left their shadowy evidence in a few photographs. The advent of digital technologies was at first regarded as an existential threat to photography but is by now recognized as the trigger for yet one more of this medium’s periodic transformations. Nevertheless, it is certainly true that the proliferation of contemporary photographs poses a particular problem for historians of photography.
