Like many of the old slides that line my closet storeroom, Paul Simon’s famous Kodachome has now faded into history. Kodak has taken “everyone’s” Kodachrome away, thus ending a legacy.
Seventy-four years ago, Kodachome became the first commercially successful color film bringing a brilliance and color to film that was before unseen. It was that feature that for decades made Kodachome the film of choice for magazine photographers, most notably National Geographic.
Using Kodachome had it’s problems. The processing could only be done at a limited amount of plants Kodak had set up worldwide, therefore unless you lived in one of those cities, timeliness was a factor.
I was lucky, while working in Dallas my studio was only a couple of miles from the Love Field Kodachrome facility. I can remember speeding down Mockingbird Lane to beat the 10 pm drop of time that allowed for film pickup the next morning.
Although Kodak is now officially killing off Kodachome, it actually did it years ago, when it sold the processing rights to a third party. That combined with the rise of Fugi as the dominent player in the film industry was really the death of Kodachrome.
Like many old photographers, it is indeed an emotional experience to see something that was such an important part of your younger life fade into history. But to be perfectly honest, I would never trade the digital photographic world for that of film. Embracing the future is good, especially if you are a photographer… goodby Kodachome.
Thanks for this perspective (now I have the Simon & garfunkel song in my head!) What a change we see with the digital era! A while ago I saw someone use an old school film camera. After he snapped a shot, a little kid went up and said “can I see it?” – expecting the image to be in the view finder, like digital. Instant! No sending the film away to a plant…
I will always remember Kodachrome and the song together. The first time I heard the song by Paul Simon, I was attending the Southern Short Course in North Carolina and David Hume Kennerly ( Gerald Ford’s Photographer) presented a slide show using the song as background. I remember we liked the photos and really loved the song. He had become a celebrity at the time and was joined at the event by Candace Bergen who went on to have her own connection with journalism ( just on television) as Murphy Brown. So long Kodachrome. I really won’t miss you that much, but I would hate to give up the song. I suppose some day in the future a young photographer upon hearing the tune will ask “what was Kodachrome?”