The Star Box Camera

OBJECT OF THE MONTH MAY 2025

The object we are focusing on this month comes from the estate of photographer Dirk Reinartz. It is a Kodak box camera, painted white, covered with numerous signatures, and adorned with the logo of the weekly magazine Stern . It appears to be a personal gift that Reinartz received between 1971 and 1977 – during his time as a photographer for the Hamburg-based magazine.

The signatures on the camera are from colleagues of that era – including the renowned photojournalist Robert Lebeck, with whom Reinartz shaped the photographic style of Stern magazine, and Gerd Heidemann, who gained international fame in 1983 through the purchase of the so-called "Hitler Diaries." The names of other renowned photojournalists such as Volker Hinz, Perry Kretz, and Jay Ullal can also be found on the camera body. Eberhard Seeliger is also worth mentioning; in 1971, after abandoning his studies with Otto Steinert, Reinartz undertook a three-week reporting trip to Japan as the prize for winning first place in Stern's "Youth Photographs Research" photo competition.

Beneath the white paint layer and the signatures lies the Brownie No. 2 model, produced by Kodak between 1901 and 1935. The camera's construction is remarkably simple: a cardboard body covered in imitation leather, a basic roll film mechanism, a fixed-focal-length lens, and a shutter with a 1/40-second exposure time. Thanks to its straightforward design and inexpensive materials, Kodak was able to offer it for just two US dollars—a price that made photography accessible to a wider public for the first time. Its operation was also explicitly designed for amateur photographers. The camera was advertised with the slogan, still known today: "You press the button, we do the rest."

Thus, our object of the month not only represents a formative phase in Dirk Reinartz's professional career, but also a milestone in the history of photography – the beginning of amateur photography.