Documentation Over Product and Proccess

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As an graduate student primarily studying art education I can not pass up this opportunity to combine commentary on Kodak advertising with the value ascribed to 'child-art'.

Here we see a young girl painting at an easil. She is turning around and smiling at us, portrayed as playing just as much as she is experiencing something memorable. The fact that she is looking at us, posed at a blank backdrop, and placed in a frame lets us know that this is an advertisement of "the kind of memories you could frame if you have this Hawkeye flash". On a side note, we can assume that this packaging advertising does not come from the very first years of the Brownie, more likely it can be ascribed to the 1920's or later, as this is being targeted at parents, not children.

Now, my response to this advertisement as an art educator is that Kodak is framing the documentation of the activity as the valuable aspect, rather than the child's art. We culturally are unsure what to do with children's art. We either temporarily post it on the fridge, file it away, or toss it out within a week. We rely on the phrase "that's nice" when we don't get it, don't want to give it the time, or think it is meaningless and sloppy. Actually, we struggle to classify it as art, even in the profession of art education. This representation is potentially saying that the documentation of the process and engagement is important, a reflection on that idea that the learning process is more valuable than the product. But, I cannot help but say that this is taking it out of its historical context. Kodak's purpose is in no way to give credit to the artistic process, they are not representing the child as an artist, but as a child, playing. In this case, neither the process or the product (a possibly irrelevant, yet continually debated dichotomy in art education) are as important as documenting this fleeting moment.