It is always a pleasure to run across vintage advertising featuring photographs from this archive. Marian Pearce, an amateur from Waukegan, IL, was the grand prize winner in 1908 for this original platinum photograph in the Eastman Kodak Company’s annual advertising contest. Her winning entry, featuring a young girl snapping a photo of her (presumed) younger sister with a Brownie camera appeared in the Ladies Home Journal the following year.
Composite illustration: top: Mrs. W.W. Pearce: black & white detail: from original platinum print: “1908 Kodak Photographic Advertising Contest First Prize Winner, Amateur Class”: 15.3 x 19.3 cm | bottom: detail: 3-color halftone: from “Let the Children Kodak”, by the Eastman Kodak Company reproduced in June, 1909 issue of the American magazine “Ladies Home Journal”
What was unexpected was seeing the photograph in the ad published in color. Eastman Kodak advertising manager L.B. Jones oversaw this campaign, with the theme of “Let the Children Kodak.” The three-color halftone process used to reproduce the photo in the June, 1909 issue of the magazine may have been the result of a hand-colored version of the Pearce photograph.
“Let the Children Kodak” : vintage advertisement in June, 1909 issue of “Ladies Home Journal”: from: online resource: Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920: Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Sadly, Mrs. Pearce is not given credit for the photo in the ad, which is of course still common today, although her grand prize of $300.00 she earned in the amateur category of the 1908 contest was a king’s ransom for the time.
