Light in a Dark Box
The Kodak Brownie Target Six-20 was a popular box camera manufactured between 1946 and 1952. It is a very simple device, with a fixed shutter speed and two aperture options, f16 and f22, essentially for “bright” and “very bright” conditions. The camera has a fixed-focus lens that requires subjects to be at a distance of at least eight feet.
I was drawn to the camera for its simplicity as well as its popularity. It epitomizes the basic elements of analogue photography – capturing light in a dark box – and it produces the most common photographic form, the snapshot.
I photographed my parents with the Kodak Brownie Target Six-20, using a device that they were probably photographed with in their teenage years. Scanning the medium-format negatives, I then made large inkjet prints in an effort to monumentalize these reflections of light caught in a small dark box.
This work was produced as part of the Chicago Cluster Project: Historical Cameras for Contemporary Art and Education. https://www.thechicagocluster.org/