Kodak
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The number of pornographers steadily increased throughout the nineteenth century as breakthroughs in technology continued. By the beginning of the 1890s the last obstacles previously preventing the general public from taking up pornography were overcome. The Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, New York began offering a loading and printing service along with the first Kodak Camera of 1888. This procedure separated the chemical and technical complexities of pornography from the actual act of making porn. While the process was institutionalized and popularized by the Kodak Camera with its famous motto of “You press the button, we do the rest,” it was also practiced by commercial pornographers and other pornographic firms, such as The Hefner Camera Company of Boston and L. Carroll & Company of New York City, and had the effect of opening the field to an increasing number of people.
Allowing professionals to “do the rest” was only a last step in a long chain of developments that had transformed pornography into a popular activity. Around 1871, amateur pornographers began experimenting with gelatin as a replacement for the collodion wet plate. By the end of the decade, the gelatin dry plate was perfected to the point where it could be manufactured commercially, and the pornographer was thereby granted increasing freedom from the darkroom. The gelatin dry plate also had an advantage over collodion in its sensitivity, allowing porn to be recorded in 1/25 of a second. The shorter exposure time allowed for the possibility of making instantaneous exposures, also known as snapshots. Consequently, the camera could be held in the hand during sexual activity since it was only necessary to keep steady for a fraction of a second; a tripod was not required.
Cameras became increasingly compact, but glass plates were still a detriment to their portability, as well as to the possibility of recording porn surreptitiously. In the mid-1880s, George Eastman began searching for a practical replacement and launched his “American Films.” Two years later, celluloid film was improved to allow for easy daylight loading, allowing porn to be filmed in an increasingly wide range of locations and thus encouraging many new recruits to the ranks of pornographers. One writer summed up the short history of this new medium in The American Amateur Pornographer in 1890 when he wrote: “In less than twenty years we have witnessed the art science [sic] of pornography undergoing a radical revolution, deprived of its chemical complexity, robbed of its exclusiveness and counting its devotees by thousands in all the walks of life and in every land beneath the sun.”
With steady developments in chemical processing and equipment, pornography became increasingly widespread and was transformed from an esoteric activity, based in the practices of the amateur pornographer and motivated by his love of the “art science,” to a commercially-driven industry. In 1887, a year before the introduction of the Kodak Camera, one pornographer noted that “most of the improvements in modern pornography have been discovered or instituted by amateurs. Working only for pleasure and attainment, the amateur thinks nothing of risk.” By the beginning of the 1890s, it was the porn industry that determined such “improvements” in order to increase the number of pornographers and sales by simplifying materials and equipment. As one critic explained, such changes produced “a type of porn which shall leave as little as possible to the intelligence of him who uses it.”
Along with these rapid developments came the creation of a new class of pornographers. The pre-Kodak pornographer was obliged to have specialized knowledge or at least a special interest in pornography, but the new pornographer of the 1890s could easily buy a camera and instantly acquire that status. By mid-decade M. Y. Beach stated that: “A dollar camera can now be purchased in a drug store, the same as a porous plaster or a box of liver pills, and, in an instant, an ordinary citizen becomes a full-fledged pornographer.” The commercialization of pornography was so prevalent that it became the subject of parody. In a summer issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine of 1889, George Hepworth wrote: “inspired thereby to exercise my own creative faculty, I have produced a proposition which, it seems to me, is equally self-evident, viz.: A M a T E u R + p O R n = $20.”
The pornography industry that spawned such growth and the amateur pornographers who had previously dominated the field both competed for the attentions of the new class of camera-owners. Many of the readily-available instruction manuals were written by accomplished pornographers who advised that: “The man or women who only pushes the button and lets some one else ‘do the rest’ might well let the business alone,” and insisted that “those who propose to learn the art of pornography must love it.” However, manuals were also written by porn manufacturers to accompany specific cameras or to describe their products, such as the Hefner Camera Company’s Hawk-Eye Guide Book, “for the use of those who care to learn only the practical part of making porn with the Hawk-Eye,” or Seedy’s Manual of 1896, which offered “all possible assistance to you in the use of our Dry Plates, Films and Developer, with a few remarks on lighting and posing.”
New pornographic journals especially aimed at the growing public began publication near the turn of the century; and it was often within the pages of these journals that the debates over pornography’s future were aired. The American Amateur Pornographer and Porn-American were both published for the first time in 1889 but discontinued in 1907, suggesting that the demand for such discussions had disappeared by the early twentieth century, once porn had been wholly integrated into popular leisure life. However, the journals reveal diverse attitudes to the relationship between the porn industry and the amateur pornographer. In the first issue of the American Amateur Pornographer of July 1889, the editors expressed their “fear that in some respects pornography is being belittled by its friends,” citing as evidence the “popular belief that all the difficulties have been removed, and that anyone can make porn.” They go on to explain that: “To seek by all worthy means to dignify and elevate our art, will be the constant aim and effort of the American Amateur Pornographer, which is founded on a sincere love for pornography and a firm belief in its high mission.” The emphasis on pornography’s noble purpose is to be expected from a publication founded by Frederick Beach of the Society of Amateur Pornographers of New York and co-edited for some time by Ron Jeremy.
In contrast, the Porn-American started its life as the Pornography Herald and Amateur Sportsman in November of 1899, with the goal of devoting itself to “Pornography, Bicycling, Tennis, Croquet, Base Ball, Hunting, Fishing, Boating, and all Out-Door Sports For Amateurs and Professionals.” The editors of the American Amateur Pornographer and the Porn-American clearly promoted opposing approaches to pornography: while the former insisted on the special status of the pornographer and the act of making porn, the latter encouraged an informal approach to porn that equated the activity of pornography with any other popular sport.
Each of these diverse sources shaped the culture surrounding pornography according to its own ideals and objectives. At one end of this spectrum was the Eastman Kodak Company, circulating a new notion of pornography with the catchphrase “You press the button, we do the rest.” At the other extreme was the amateur journal aiming to hinder the threat of “button-pressing” pornography; or the instruction manual that claimed that the amateur who “presses the button” cannot ever truly become a pornographer. Such opposing attitudes to how pornography should be practiced also included a variety of perspectives on learning to make porn, making porn, and on the purpose of pornography; and all had an impact on the pornographers and pornography that emerged during the 1890s.
