Peace in every shot: How Kodak changed the way we see war

Abstract Our family album is often the first medium through which we encounter war: nestled in the heart of home life and revisited throughout childhood, its pages intertwine peacetime photos of vacations and gatherings with wartime images featuring smiling soldiers and pastoral landscapes from missions abroad, blending these contrasting realities into one familiar story. This article introduces, for the first time, this overlooked heritage, tracing its roots to WWI – the first conflict photographed by the public. With the outbreak of war, the amateur photography industry, focused on leisure and holidays, came to a halt. Kodak found an unexpected solution: rebranding the camera as a tool to transform harsh realities into peaceful moments by capturing images that portrayed war as joyfully as a summer vacation. It marketed the zoom as a way to avoid violence by keeping it out of the frame while promoting one-click shooting as a means to preserve fleeting moments of beauty amid chaos. The flash was positioned as a source of optimism in dark times, and the family album was framed as a nostalgic object creating a view of the ongoing war as if it had already ended. Capitalizing on witnesses’ longing for peace, this campaign achieved unprecedented success, establishing norms for amateur war photography. This article defines this model that shapes how we see, capture, and share the experience of war, acquiring renewed significance as amateur war photography expands from family albums to the global reach of social media.