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Alaska State Museum December 2025 Artifact of the Month is a Folding Brownie Camera

The Alaska State Museum December 2025 Artifact of the Month is a No. 3A Folding Brownie camera (object ID: III-O-910).

From 1909 to 1915, the Eastman Kodak Company, better known as “Kodak,” produced this camera model. 

The artifact of the month utilizes 122 format film and produces 3 ¼ x 5 ½ inch negatives. The camera provided an inexpensive way to make contact prints. Contact printing involves placing a negative in direct contact with photography paper to make prints.

The camera features a unique shutter placement— in front of the lens. Some other Brownie models shared this design, which had a straightforward rotary shutter. It was easier and cheaper to manufacture, enabling more people to purchase the camera. The camera's original price was $9-$10 dollars in 1909 or equal to $356.02 in 2025. Photographers were able to mass produce postcards with minimal equipment and no need for an enlarger.

The camera measures 10 in x 5 in x 2 ½ in (25 cm x 12.7cm x 6cm) and weighs approximately 2.2 lbs. (997 g). It was donated to the museum, along with a photo collection from Bernice Morton. Morton’s mother, Mrs. Arnold, lived in Juneau c. 1912. Mrs. Arnold's half-brother worked for Winter and Pond in Juneau.* One of the photographs donated by Bernice Morton, which could have been taken with the Brownie camera, is titled "Juneau baseball team on S.S. Alameda, Aug. 4, 1912, on way to Ketchikan" (ASL-P167-151).

Note

*Lloyd Valentine Winter (1866-1945) and Edwin Percy Pond (1872-1943) arrived in Juneau in 1893. The duo operated a curio and photography studio in Juneau for over 50 years. Winter and Pond photographed many aspects of Juneau and Southeast Alaska, including mining, the Klondike gold rush, and Tlingit culture. Many of their photographs are in the Alaska State Library Historical Collections. One of their most famous series documents the doomed Princess Sophia on Vanderbilt Reef (ASL-P87-1704).

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