Royal Mail Postage Stamp Camera, 1907-1915 1993/132

Camera This is a Royal Mail Postage Stamp Camera. It was produced between 1907 and 1915 by W. Butcher & Sons of London. The business started as a pharmacy that sold the chemicals required to develop photographs. As the popularity of photography grew, the company was inspired to begin manufacturing their own range of cameras in 1889. Novelty The Royal Mail Postage Stamp Camera is a multiplying camera fitted with fifteen lenses. This allows it to take fifteen identical postage stamp sized photographs in a single exposure. It was sold as a novelty camera and specially decorated developing papers were available to complete the postage stamp look. Plate This camera was designed to use dry plate negatives. Dry plates are sheets of glass coated in a gelatine emulsion. Before the process was invented in 1871 photographers needed to quickly coat, expose and process ‘wet’ plates in one sitting. Dry plates could be transported, exposed, and then processed later. Reproduction This multiplying camera can produce fifteen smaller copies of an artwork. Walter Benjamin explored how these methods of technological reproduction changed the nature of art in his 1936 essay Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin argues technological reproduction results in a loss of uniqueness, but also makes art more accessible, democratic, and political.