The Happiest Days We’ve Ever Had?
(L) Vintage Kodak Ad 1935 .
Anthony Weiner’s salacious snapshots stand in sharp contrast to those syrupy sentimental ads that were Kodak trademark for decades. In 2011 Anthony Weiner stepped down as Congressman after he acknowledged sending photos of himself in his underwear to a college student. Several years later photos revealed he had x rated liaisons with a woman a year after he resigned from Congress for similar behavior.

“The Snapshots you’ll want Tomorrow you must take Today,” declares a Kodak ad from 1935.

“What a rush of memories a snapshot like this brings. You live again the precious hours-all the associations come back…”

When a former mayoral hopeful flashed his wiener over the internet, that “precious keepsake” would indeed  come back to haunt him, quashing any hopes of becoming N.Y.’s mayor.

Pop Goes the Weiner

N.Y. Post August 29, 2016

Now Anthony Weiner is back in the news again. While his wife Huma Abedin traveled around the country with her boss Hillary Clinton, her horny hubby had been exchanging lewd photos with “a busty brunette” out west for over a year, smugly sending a pix of himself in his underwear with his son sweetly sleeping next to him.

Talk about your Kodak moments! That slimey, sexting devotee has had his steamy share.

Those sentimental Kodak moments to be cherished forever, as portrayed in saccharine Kodak ads, have now taken on a tawdry tone in this age of twitter and i phones.

Snapshots- You press the button…it does the rest

Snapshots to Treasure -Vintage Kodak Ad 1946

When Kodak popularized the snapshot as the modern way of capturing Americans at play it is doubtful that the lewd photos taken by sleazy shutterbug Anthony Weiner were what  George Eastman had in mind.

With the introduction of Kodak Verichrome  Film  old limitations for picture-taking were wiped out and the all American snapshot was truly born.Kodak promised that  people could look as natural as you want them. Every one could be his own artist replicating those heart warming  moments captured so brilliantly in Kodak’s romanticized ads.

Bristling with their box Brownies Americans have long been hard at work recording the spectacle of their middle class moments, cameras clicking away at birthday parties, picnics graduations and communions.

The easy to use cameras and reliable film made every man their own recorder.

Even Anthony Weiner, whose salacious snapshots now  stand in sharp contrast with the syrupy, sentimental ads that were Kodak’s trademark for decades.

Don’t just write it- Picture It– with Snapshots

Contrasts
(L)Vintage ad Kodak Verichrome Film 1934 (R) Anthony Weiner’s infamous crotch shot

By the 1930s, Kodak encouraged the public to not merely write letters, but to always enclose a snapshot as well.

“I’m sending the snapshot- did you really mean it when you asked for one?” a woman with a smart bob and a wistful smile reads in the handwritten letter from her beau in this Kodak ad from 1934.

Holding the precious photo close to her heart, the  cloying copy reads:“How much a snap shot says to the one who waits for it! No longer is the separation real. This little square of paper brings them face to face. Hearing the whispers that cannot be written in a letter. Feeling the heart beats…Always snapshots have been intimate and expressive, but now they are more so than ever.”

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Lucky Snapshot?
(L) Vintage ad Kodak Verichrome Film 1934 (R) Anthony Weiner’s infamous crotch shot

“Lucky snapshot- to see you every day!,” the pert Miss in this 1934 reads smiling sweetly as she stares longingly at the photo of her Romeo.

“The same words belong to everyone. But a snapshot is yours alone to send- it is the one who sends it. It gives a letter the tenderness, the intimacy of a personal meeting…Now snapshots are more expressive than ever.”

“Snapshots means so much because they are shared and treasured!”

Nature Boy

I snap them in bunches-yet everyone is different!
(L) Vintage ad Kodak Verichrome Film 1937 (R) Anthony Weiner’s infamous crotch shots

Capturing natural, true to life pictures contrasted with old stodgy studio portraits. Just ask Carlos Danger.

“I snap them in bunches yet everyone is different “ explains this 1937 ad.  “See the changes in expression,” the narrator marvels “

“Try snap shooting the modern way. Follow the little girl around with your camera. Don’t pose her or ask her to do things. Let her do what she wants, and keep snapping,” the copy explains to the newbie photographer.

“In a few minutes you’ll get a whole assortment of expressions. Different kinds of smiles, different kinds of gestures. All free, easy, natural. Snaps almost as alive as life itself.”

“This is the way great snaps are made nowadays. You’ll be astonished at your skill, when you see the prints. And what a priceless record they do make.”

Kodak promised-“time stops when the shutter clicks”…and so did mayoral campaigns. And marriages.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.