HAVE YOURSELF A SNAPPY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

By MICHAEL PERKINS

EVERY HOLIDAY SEASON SINCE 2014, THE NORMAL EYE has cast a nostalgic glance backward to the days when the Eastman Kodak Company was the undisputed titan of home photographic supplies and film. The supplies…the cameras, lenses and tools, were mainly sold just once; however, the film was sold and resold endlessly, as the company marketed the concept of capturing life’s most precious moments, convincing us, in fact, that an experience was not quite complete if it were not frozen in time on our billions of Brownies and Instamatics. And nowhere else was Kodak’s perpetual consumption campaign more powerful than at Christmastime.

Over many a yultide, Kodak introduced the point-and-shoot camera, the portable pocket camera, the first practical color print film, and the first affordable systems for producing slides and home movies. The holidays were always high season for get-togethers with loved ones, hence an amazing emotional lever for Kodak. It’s just not a family gathering without pictures, lots of them! And we’ve made it so fast, so convenient, so….normal. No skill our experience needed, encouraged the ads. Just put a Kodak under the tree (tagged with the company’s holiday mantra, “open me first!” and let the snapping commence. Something fun/happy/wonderful may escape into mere memory, so be ready with plenty of film. flash bulbs and batteries.

Kodak Christmas ads were equal opportunity guilt generators, with Mom and Dad sharing the responsibility for a complete chronicle of every happy moment. Pop busy putting together the model train for Junior? Then let Mother step in and catch a few candids of all the joy. Mom showing Sis how her new Tiny Tears doll works? Then it’s Papa to the rescue, immortalizing every instant of happiness.

Years past Kodak’s glory days, today’s photographic habits are now so ingrained that we can no longer separate experiences from the need to document them, often treasuring an image of how happy we were even as the actual details of that happiness fade to gray. But such is the strange contract we all have with photographs. They have been called “a lie that tells the truth”, and sometimes, some strange and wonderful times, that has to be enough. Incredibly, like some sort of Christmas miracle, sometimes it is.