Decorah readers interested in photography, design and cultural history can now pick up a new book by Luther College professor Aaron Lurth at the Luther Book Shop. Small Luxuries: Film Cameras, a 128-page illustrated hardcover, is also available online.
Published Aug. 4 by the Quarto Group, the book was locally available as of Aug. 23, according to the supplied report, which was published Aug. 24, 2026, and updated Aug. 25. It is presented as a cultural history of film cameras rather than a buying guide for shoppers comparing technical features.
A history of photography through film cameras
Lurth uses the history of film cameras to examine design, technology, industry, politics and American culture. The book explores how cameras became part of everyday life and why certain models gained wider cultural importance.
The volume considers major world events, large manufacturers, notable cameras and influential figures in photography. It also follows how companies developed products and how industrial design influenced the way people recorded and interpreted images.
Designed as a coffee-table-style book, Small Luxuries combines photographs, illustrations, vintage advertisements, newspaper clippings and other visual material. Lurth sourced and photographed about one-third of the images himself.
The cameras featured include models he owns or was able to access. Among them is a 1909 Kodak No. 3A Folding Brownie, identified in the report as one of the oldest cameras included in the book.
Where camera history meets political history
One section examines Leica, the German camera company, during the rise of Nazi Germany. According to the supplied report, Leica owner Ernst Leitz II helped approximately 300 Jewish people leave Germany during the 1930s.
Leitz assigned those people to offices in France, Great Britain, Hong Kong and the United States while presenting the arrangements as Leica employment. The effort later became known as the Leica Freedom Train.
Lurth uses the episode to show how the history of cameras can also involve political decisions, corporate actions and individual choices during a period of crisis.
Lurth’s Luther College connection
Lurth earned a bachelor’s degree in art from Luther College in 2008 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography and graphic design from the University of Iowa in 2012. He later returned to Luther as a professor of art and visual communication and serves as director of the college’s visual communication program.
His photography has appeared in projects connected with National Geographic, ABC, NBC, MTV.com, Time, the Des Moines Register, General Electric, CNET.com, the Red Cross and The Iowa Review. His films have screened at more than 100 festivals worldwide and received several awards, including the Iowa Motion Picture Association’s Best Documentary film.
In 2022, two of Lurth’s photographs entered the permanent collection of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport. His new book extends that visual storytelling background into a study of the cameras, companies and people that influenced photography.
For Decorah residents, Small Luxuries: Film Cameras is available at the Luther Book Shop and online.