Film Cameras: A brief history, and stellar images created with it

THE BROWNIE TARGET Six-20   | 1946-1952 
It is difficult to overstate the historic importance of the first small, hand-held, simple-to-use, inexpensive box camera. Brownie touted its simplicity of use by declaring that it could be “operated by any school boy or girl”. Until then, getting a picture taken had usually been a formal, posed affair, done by a professional photographer in a studio. The Brownie gave rise to the idea of the snapshot. Having written an article in the 1940s for amateur photographers, suggesting that expensive cameras were not necessary for quality photography, Picture Post’s celebrated photographer Bert Hardy supported his argument by using a Brownie to stage a carefully posed snapshot of two young women sitting on railings above a breezy promenade in Blackpool, UK. The Brownie range became the best-selling cameras of all-time, especially the Six-20 with its easily respoolable film.