Spanish Film Wallets
These three distinctive, Spanish film wallets are from the collection of Madrid photo historian and archivist, Gerardo F. Kurtz. For other unusual Spanish Kodak publications, see his scans of El Kodakista magazine.
As a photo historian, Gerardo included more than the usual information about his film wallets, "The Manero (Probably Salvador Manero Bayarri) wallet is perhaps not 100% a "Kodakgirl", but it IS a negative wallet for a Kodak photographic shop (+ typical Kodak photo tips printed inside). Its hard to give a date to this wallet, but I would think it is something from (at the latest) the 1930 to 1935 period (before the 1936-39 civil war here in any case)."
According to Gerardo, the image on the cover of this wallet, "was quite common in Spain sometime in the final 20's and during the early-mid 30's. I would think it was the most common image on Kodak negative wallets here in Spain. I have never sat down to compare the ones I have with others in archives I have worked in, so I can't tell if there are any variations on the theme, or even if some type of chronological variation exists."

Gerardo notes that this image of the Kodak Girl in a striped ski jacket, "is a very rare negative wallet. It is dated on the back as NOV 1955. In my opinion, an interesting variation on the stripe theme.

In case this is lost in time and geography gap, in 1955 this image would have been understood in Spain as "ultramodern" - an image of a lady wearing pants then would have been quite a statement, one of both modernity and perhaps even of a moral and political challenge."



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