Outdated kodachrome '73, '79, '83, by Goodimages.
Recently, Kodak announced it was discontinuing production of Kodachrome products. Known for its vibrant color, Kodachrome, was a child of the Depression, a process invented by two musicians—violinist Leopold Godowski Jr. and pianist Leopold Mannes—whose names fueled the photo-industry joke that Kodachrome was created by God and Man.
Seventy-four years ago, Kodachrome was introduced as a 16mm movie film, around the same time that Technicolor was aggressively marketing its 3-strip color process for motion pictures. As the economy and the nation’s spirit faltered, there was a deep need and a growing market for bright, colorful pictures. By 1936, Kodachrome’s vivid color palette was made available in a 8mm movie film format for amateur film makers and in the 35mm slide format that—by mid-century, when fortunes and moods were rising once again—encouraged snapshooters to create and star in slideshows about their everyday lives. Kodachrome color was unique and beloved because it captured and intensified life. It spawned a love song (Paul Simon’s 1973 hit, Kodachrome) and a park in Utah (Kodachrome Basin State Park) was named after it. But, Kodachrome was a complex product to manufacture and process. And as consumer taste shifted toward hand-sized prints and instant photography, and once digital photography was introduced and widely marketed, Kodachrome sales tanked.
And now it’s gone. We’ll miss it, because while Kodachrome’s demise doesn’t mean that all the color’s been drained from our lives and pictures, if we want “those nice bright colors” and the “greens of summers” that Paul Simon sang about we’ll have to make them for ourselves by fiddling with software on our laptops and desktops. R.I.P photo magic. And one more thing to add to our “To-Do” lists . . .
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That’s a pretty sad story. I still wonder if all Kodachrome will be gone. I guess as well as 35mm there will be 9mm movie film as well. This is a bummer but someone some day will capture this market and hopefully restore film to photographers who like to use film still.
Another obsolete format for archivists and conservators to be concerned. I believe the press releases stated that there is only one remaining place to get this kind of film developed.
Here’s the link to an article about Kansas-based Dwayne’s Photos, the last lab in the world to process Kodachrome. It explains why Kodachrome color, archivally speaking, is so stable, and how the market (and vendors able to process the material) have vanished.
After several years of shooting primarily digital and occasionally large format film, I felt inspired this weekend to dust off the old Pentax SLR and expose a 35mm roll of film. After finishing and winding up the roll, I hesitated about where to take it for processing, worried that in my break from 35mm film, 1-hour film services had gone the way of Kodachrome. I stopped into a Walgreens and was relieved to see that indeed, film can still be dropped off and developed in under 60 minutes. But I wonder how long it’ll be before drug store photo labs switch totally to digital.
Great post. We are truly in a digital age, but I can’t help feeling as if we use some artisticness with the slow decline of film.