A new book from Luther College professor Aaron Lurth gives Decorah readers a different way to look at film cameras—not simply as mechanical tools, but as objects shaped by design, politics, technology and personal experience.
Small Luxuries: Film Cameras is a 128-page illustrated hardcover available through the Luther Book Shop and online. Lurth published the book Aug. 4 through the Quarto Group, according to the supplied report. He is a visual communication professor and director of Luther’s visual communication program at Luther College.
A cultural history, not an equipment guide
The book is designed for readers interested in photography, graphic design and cultural history. Rather than functioning as an equipment-shopping guide or a catalogue of product specifications, it examines the relationship between camera design, technological change, American culture and major events around the world.
Lurth discusses major manufacturers, notable models and influential people to show how photographic products acquired meaning beyond their practical use. The coffee-table-style volume combines photographs, illustrations, vintage advertisements, newspaper clippings and other visual materials.
About one-third of the images were sourced and photographed by Lurth. The cameras he used included models he owns or was able to access, among them a 1909 Kodak No. 3A Folding Brownie, one of the oldest cameras featured in his photography.
That combination of historical research and firsthand photography allows Small Luxuries to consider both how cameras operated and why particular models mattered. The book also traces the development of camera companies, broadening its appeal to readers interested in industrial design and the history of visual culture.
The Leica story at the center
One of the book’s central accounts concerns Leica, the German camera company. During the 1930s, Leica owner Ernst Leitz II helped approximately 300 Jewish people escape 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 demonstrate that camera history can include political events and the experiences of people affected by them, alongside innovation, manufacturing and design.
Lurth’s visual storytelling background
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. With Small Luxuries: Film Cameras, the Luther professor extends that visual storytelling work into a history of the cameras, companies and people that helped shape how the world records and understands images.