Kodakery, Manuscript on Photography with Photos and Drawings

c1920. This handmade photography guide, called, Kodakery, contains a series of drawings, photographs, and printed photographs, used to illustrate the art of photography. Made from a photo album, it contains 23 pages of written text, 5 pages of drawings, 26 individual photographs, and 16 printed photographs. Kodakery is a term that was derived from the camera name "Kodak", and according to this guide it meant "the taking of pictures, developing and finally printing to show the picture." The guide starts off with a description of the camera itself, its various parts and 6 different types of lenses (miniscus, concave, convex, meniscus achromatic, rapid rectilnear, and anastigmatic lenses), and more specifically how light enters the camera through the different lenses. The guide continues on to provide in-depth explanations of a fixed focus camera and of that of an adjustable focal length, and what that means for the camera's depth of focus, even discussing what F-stops are best for different types of pictures. Next the guide discusses the film itself and its different parts: a strip of celluloid, a gelatin, and a silver bromide, before continuing on to instruct the reader on how to develop the film and how make prints from the negatives. This section is rather in depth, as it goes into the room requirements, the chemicals needed, how to enlarge prints, and different contrast filters that can be used. The guide ends with a series of quick tips for the reader to remember, such as "be sure the temperature of the developer and fixing is below 70 degrees" and "fixed focus cameras have great depth of focus." On ever other page of the guide are either drawings, actual photographs or printed photographs used to illustrated the text. For example, there is a drawing of each of the different types of lenses, a series of four printed photographs that show how the use of different contrast filters affect the image, and actual photographs used to illustrated what a photograph looks like when it is either under or over developed. Green covers, 50 pgs. Measures 10 1/4" x 7 1/4" The photographs and printed photographs are held in place by photo corners, while the text pages are line paper that has been pasted in. It is unclear if this album was meant to be a first draft for a printed photographic manual, or made for a school assignment.