This is one of the first Kodak Moments — when taking a photograph involved a simple point and shoot with the new Kodak box camera, but developing the film meant sending the entire camera back to Kodak, for them to remove and develop the roll, and reload your camera before returning it. Because the simple cameras tended to distort the image near the edges, Kodak decided they could provide better results by trimming the picture to a circle. As with most 19th century photos, they were printed on very thin paper, so the image was mounted on a cardboard backing. This picture is from either the original Kodak camera of 1888, or the Kodak #1 of 1889-95, so the picture is 2.5 inches in diameter, mounted on cardstock 4 x 5 inches. This public domain photo is identified as “Boy and girl outside of 900 14th St., N.W., Washington, D.C.” by the Library of Congress. The girl may be one of the photographer’s daughters, who was born late in 1879 or early 1880, according to the 1880 census. Another photo in the collection by the same photographer is dated April 9, 1889. The camera held film rolls that could take 100 photographs, so this image may have been from within a few months of that date — the children wear heavy coats, and the trees are bare of leaves, but the April 9th image recorded a heavy snow-fall, and we see no snow here.

Notice that you can see the shadow of the photographer’s head — a characteristic that would become very common in snapshot photos made by amateurs with Kodak cameras. The photographer is identified as Uriah Hunt Painter (1837-1900) who was not a professional photographer, but a newspaper reporter. He and his wife and two children were in West Chester PA at the time of the 1880 census, but those children were born in Washington DC, and the family returned there some time in the 1880s. Other photographs in the collection are from the Kodak #2 camera, which had a slightly larger image, though still round and mounted on the same size card; it was 3.5 inches in diameter. So Uriah updated his camera in the 1889-97 period when the #2 was produced. Being a reporter, it is not far-fetched to guess he had an original Kodak in 1888 and upgraded around 1890 when he learned of the advantages offered by the new improved model.