There is a type of photo book which, at one level, seems to be more about gear or technique than documentation or theme, and that definition creates a pique of curiosity. Here, for example, they say, is a collection of images all made with a pinhole camera, or a camera obscura, or with a lens ground in a solution made entirely of peanut butter. That definition, that focus, makes us wonder what is possible within a particular limit.

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“Brownie”, by David Katzenstein
Published by Hirmer Verlag, 2025
Review by W. Scott Olsen

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But to say these books are about gear or technique is actually a misunderstanding. There is something else going on, which the hardware and practice help illuminate. The gear is a way of seeing. Fisheye, f/0.9, telephoto, they are all an act of interpretation. But if the images are no good, then there’s no insight or revelation.

Think about Michael Kenna’s book, shot entirely with a Holga camera. The collection is really not about the cheap camera.  It is a book about the oftentimes ethereal, filled-with-implication mood and emotional depth the Holga produces. And Kenna has an excellent eye for compositions in that mood.

There are 1000 variations on this theme—think about all the bad camera contests—and not one of them is really about the box. The projects that seek to focus on a kind of feeling or way of seeing. As with all photography, the best is capturing some sliver of truth.

There is a new book called Brownie, by David Katzenstein, which, as you might suspect, is a collection of color photographs all shot using a Kodak Brownie. To be more exact, he used a Duraflex, the upgrade of the original Brownie, purchased serendipitously at a garage sale in 1975.

In his foreword, Katzenstein writes:

Beginning in 1979, I began experimenting with color photography, using this camera’s limitations as a way to push the boundaries of the medium for fine art photography. My true influences at the time were not other photographers but painters who use of color and composition excited me—Matisse and Bonnard come to mind.

Every shot in this book is from either 1979 or somewhere in the 1980s, a span of ten years, and every shot has the color, depth of field, crispness, or lack thereof, of the Duraflex. They are vibrant and wonderfully retro-fresh.

In a brief introduction, Richard Grosbard writes:

Ultimately, the camera’s technical simplicity became Kazenstein’s greatest ally. Its fixed-focus lens creates a signature soft focus that lends his images and ethereal quality, while its rendering of color infuses each photograph with a nostalgic warmth. The camera’s single setting and fixed focus at ten feet forced him to move physically to achieve his desired compositions, making him an active participant in each scene, rather than a distant observer…This collection invites you to journey alongside Katzenstein as he explores the boundaries between documentation and artistic interpretation.

Brownie is a collection of 134 images—travel photography, street photography—ranging from Mexico to Morocco, Egypt, Guatemala, Ecuador, Haiti, Peru, and the United States. There are exteriors and interiors, and there’s a feeling to the compositions most of us will instantly recognize.  Perhaps more pronounced in the film days, it’s the feeling of oops, didn’t mean to press the shutter release right then. And the images from these seemingly accidental exposures are oftentimes more revealing, more true than any consciously constructed composition. Their accidental nature catches the universe off guard.

Of course, this accidental nature is intended, more a style than a mistake. These images seem sudden, with the odd colors and off-placed focus. They are a bit like a backstage look at life.

Because the camera was a Duraflex, the images are all square, medium format. Square images ask for a different reading than landscape or portrait orientations. More often than not, the viewer’s eye starts in the center and works toward the edges. This makes for a different sense of composition, and Katzenstein is brilliant at composing for color and shape.

While Grosbard claims they provide a nostalgic warmth, nostalgia is not the real appeal of this book. These images are from forty years ago, taken with a camera that was ancient even at the time of the exposures. Yes, the look is recognizable. Anyone of a certain age will look at these images and say, “Been there”. But this book is not a nostalgia for a certain time, and it’s not even a remembering of how the world looked. It’s a memory of how we made the world look, the visual definition we gave it with a camera. And it’s a memory of how true that felt.

Color carries emotional weight, and it carries time weight too. We see an image and we know it’s from the 80s, and simultaneously, we remember who we were back then. While I wonder what people born more recently might see in their emotional response to these images, if you’re old enough to remember seeing this way, then this book is magic. And while tack-sharp focus is a contemporary obsession, the soft focus here, or the shot with seemingly misplaced focus, directs our attention to the unexpected discoveries.

What is especially interesting about this book is that its travels range so far. There are so many disparate situations and compositions that every page is a discovery of context, color, and shape.

The Kodak Brownie and then the Duraflex became legendary cameras not for their technical sophistication but for their democratization. A great many people were able to document the world and share those images.  Those cameras helped create a visual global understanding, expectation, and vocabulary. The world they created etched itself into our collective memory.

Brownie is an extraordinary book, not for what it says about place and not for what it says about technique. It is extraordinary because it brings back to life an interpretive aesthetic milieu.

A note from FRAMES: Please let us know if you have an upcoming or recently published photography book.