Ascribed Agency

This image, borrowed from compassrose.com, represents one of the cameras most interesting factors, ascribed (and minimal) agency.

The camera essentially acts as an intermediary between the user, and that which they wish to capture. In that sense, the camera gives agency to the user, or some might say it has agency.

As the Brownie camera was primarily advertised to women and children, groups with notably much less agency then men, we arrive at an interesting conflict in idealogies. My solution to this is that while it was advertised that agency, in this case the ability to capture an image, could be found through ownership of the camera, this was just another folklore. The argument could be made in reverse, that the camera continued the seclusion of women and children from the contemporary life. The personal camera, easy enough for a women or child to use, was a domestic tool, a tool of nostalgia and emotive value.