A Kodak Refraction of Henry James's “The Real Thing”

Abstract

Eastman Kodak was in the vanguard of those companies seeking to capitalize on newly available mass markets at home and abroad in the 1880s and 1890s. George Eastman had acute instincts for photographic innovation, cost-effective manufacturing, and the assembling of powerful corporate structures, but his greatest gift was for seizing on, and fostering, the general demand for a commodity with specious aesthetic inflections – a simple camera, together with a processing service available by mail – at a time when the appetite for such things was becoming insatiable. As Lawrence W. Levine has argued, photography

was the perfect instrument for a society with a burgeoning middle class, which could not satisfy itself with processes and images that had previously been confined to elite circles.

The aim of this article is to examine aspects of Henry James's predicament within the context of mass photography. In particular, the focus will be on “The Real Thing” (1893) and its engagement with issues of representation and reproduction in an arena forever changed by Kodak.