Figure 1.--We see a lot of square snapshots in the 1950s-60s. Kodak had some popular cameras that shot square format snaps. Some like this 1959 of a 4th of July event has jagged edges.

Snapshots exist from the 1890s, but not very many. With the Kodak Brownie (1900) and cameras produced by competitors there was an explosion of family images. We see scenes around the hme as ell as from outings and vacations. There is very little we do not know about the American family because of all the images. Families began filling scrapbooks with the new snapshots. And even earlier, photographs apeared with post card mounts that could be mailed (1904). We also begin to see other formats like postcards. Along with this develoment, silver-nitrate began replacng abumen photographs. Most postcard-back and studio primts were silver nitrate prints. In addition silver nitrate prints replaced albumen prints. The albumen process was still used in the new century, especially for cabinet cards, but it was very rapidly replaced with the silver nitrate process. Silver nitrate would dominate American photography until color printing became common. We see mostly rectangular prints. Some had white margins like the 1920s snapshot on the previous page. We also see square snapshots begunning in the 1950s. Here we se see a square snapot from 1959 (figure 1). They were popular in America in part because of cameras marketed by Kodak. Silver nitrate black and white images dominated family snapshots until the 1970s when color photograph bgan to replace blak and white prints (1970s).

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Created: 7:04 AM 7/22/2018
Last updated: 7:04 AM 7/22/2018