A new book by Luther College professor Aaron Lurth invites Decorah readers to view film cameras as cultural artifacts rather than obsolete technology. Small Luxuries: Film Cameras is a 128-page illustrated history of camera design, the companies that produced the equipment and the people whose lives were shaped by the photography industry.
Lurth, a visual communication professor and director of Luther’s visual communication program, published the hardcover Aug. 4 through the Quarto Group, according to Luther College News. The book is available to Decorah residents through the Luther Book Shop or online.
A visual history rather than a buying guide
Although the book introduces basic camera mechanics, its main focus is historical and cultural. It is not intended as a detailed guide to equipment specifications or as shopping advice. Instead, Lurth follows film-camera technology through major manufacturers, notable models and influential figures.
The coffee-table-style book uses photographs, illustrations, vintage advertisements, newspaper clippings and other visual materials to tell that story across its 128 pages. About one-third of the images were sourced and photographed by Lurth using cameras he owns or was able to access.
Among the oldest cameras he photographed was a 1909 Kodak No. 3A Folding Brownie. That firsthand work, combined with Lurth’s research, gives readers interested in photography, graphic design and cultural history a closer look at how familiar camera companies developed and why their products mattered.
When camera history meets world history
One of the book’s central episodes examines Leica, the German camera company. During the 1930s, Leica owner Ernst Leitz II helped approximately 300 Jewish people leave Nazi Germany by assigning them to offices in France, Great Britain, Hong Kong and the United States under the appearance of Leica employment.
The effort later became known as the Leica Freedom Train. Lurth uses the episode to show how a camera company’s history can intersect with world events and the lives of people affected by them—not only with technological innovation or industrial design.
Lurth’s work in visual storytelling
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.
His photography has appeared in projects associated 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 work into a history of the cameras, companies and people that helped shape how the world records and understands images.