The Soldier's Kodak

In his new book, author and military historian Jon Cooksey looks back at the one camera that was able to democratise photography for the troops of the First World War – the Vest Pocket Kodak

- Jon Cooksey

It was not just their ‘troubles’ that many of the men – and women – who marched away between 1914 and 1918 packed into their ‘old kit bags’. Along with their absolute military essentials, they slipped another, unofficial, item into their pack or tunic pocket: the new, exciting, compact Vest Pocket Kodak camera – the VPK. Transported to battlefields around the world, these cherished VPKs were the tools by which the ordinary soldier or nurse would capture the significant events of what would be the single greatest adventure of their lives – in real time. No other army in history had been able to record its war in detail but the men and women of 1914-1918 had the technology; they had their trusty VPKs – blatantly advertised as the ‘Soldier’s Kodak’ – and they were determined not to miss a minute.

The VPK

Battlefield photography was not a new phenomenon. The first war photograph had depicted a scene from the American–Mexican War of 1846, and the photographs taken by Roger Fenton in the Crimea and Mathew Brady’s team during the American Civil War broadcast the gruesome realities of conflict to a wider audience – albeit often staged.