FAMILY PHOTO ALBUMS
The maxim “every picture tells a story” is writ large in the family photo
album or scrapbook, a photographic phenomenon that has dissipated in
the digital age. It may be difficult to imagine the new sense of freedom
afforded by the handheld Kodak film camera, which was introduced by
George Eastman, in 1888, and revolutionized photography in much the
same way as the cellphone camera. By the late 19th century, homemaker-
and hobbyist-photographers proliferated. As the popularity of image-
making exploded, the impulse to personally record daily activities
became more commonplace. Local events, family celebrations or vacations,
student life, as well as commercial applications yielded a range of wonderful
albums that find new resonance today.
Pictures memorialize, document, promote, educate and also serve as
artistic objects. And, when they are presented in albums or bound books,
sized, sequenced, designed and accompanied by captions, these
interlocking elements reinvent the ways in which photography is a
language. The popularity of photographic albums at the turn of the last
century parallels an important invention, the cinema. Albums created
from 1900-1915, a fecund cultural period, mirror the unprecedented
nature of these twin media to tell powerful and poetic stories.
