Claudia Pretelin: From the Kodak Girl to the Kodak Snapshot: Kodak Advertising 1920-1940

Early Kodak advertising is mostly associated with the iconic image of the Kodak Girl. Then in the 1930s, Eastman Kodak Company turned their advertising campaigns over to the New York advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. How did this change affect the public image of Kodak? Claudia Pretelin, art historian, will explore this era of Kodak advertising and how it created the basis for the so-called snapshot aesthetic. Claudia Pretelin holds a BA in communications and received her MA and PhD in art history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). For ten years, she worked as a personal assistant to the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. In 2011, she was awarded a fellowship from the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) in support of her continuing research in Kodak advertising at the George Eastman Museum. She has worked for different museums, foundations, and photo collections in Mexico City, including the Fotoseptiembre Festival in 1999 and the International Biennial of Photography in 2000. She is currently exhibitions associate at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center in Rochester, New York.