RSSKodachrome, the wicked world, and the sunny day
By Angela Gunn | Published June 24, 2009, 9:50 AM
I have a copy of Portraits, a book of Steve McCurry's photographs, on my bookshelf. The Afghan girl is on the cover -- you know the photo, yes you do, and those eyes have never left you. McCurry photographed Sharbat Gula in 1985 when she was a 13-year-old refugee, and about seven years ago he found her again, living in a remote region of Afghanistan.
I was thinking of Sharbat Gula over the weekend as we watched the story of Neda Agha-Soltan unfold -- another young woman in a terrible, riven place. There's another image you won't be forgetting soon. I wish I could, but if I could choose to forget I guess I wouldn't; it would be wrong to deny witness to what we saw in those grainy images.
Sharbat's portrait is a still photo, with skin and hair and textile tones so seamlessly reproduced she almost seems to be breathing, or preparing to dart away. It's formally composed. It's lovely, in fact -- a picture of a desperately poor girl in a terrible place, in a terrible time, and yet it's the beauty that smites you. That's Kodachrome.
The slide film first offered in 1935 by Eastman Kodak was the first commercially successful color film. Over the years, it was made available in a wide variety of sizes and formats, but by Tuesday's announcement, only Kodachrome 64 and Kodachrome 64 Professional remained in the line. And there was also just one processing facility left. In Kansas.
Some of the images in Portraits are of pure wretchedness; Mr. McCurry estimates he took over 800,000 photos on Kodachrome, many of them in some of the world's most difficult regions. But the richness and preciseness of Kodachrome's color and line give his portraits, and so many millions of other Kodachrome images shot over the years, reality and gravitas. Sharbat and the others in Mr. McCurry's portraits are there, before you, and they're demanding. You can't deny them; you will look and you will see the individual humanity of the people individually looking through the film to you.
About halfway through the video of Neda's murder, her head turns to the side. Her eyes are open. She's at the brink of death, and in those final moments her eyes go to the camera and, through it, to you. If anyone has ever looked at you in their final moment, you've never forgotten it, never will. And no one who has seen the video can deny the power of that image, by which we mean its horror and gore and grief, at the moment where her humanity comes to its end.
And so I'm sorry that we're saying goodbye to Kodachrome, which gave us those moments that collapsed time and space but made them richer, fuller, more human -- less easy to replay in our heads until they're iconic and remote, like the Rodney King beating of yore and yes, one day soon, Neda's murder (sorry, but this is how we do things). Mr. McCurry -- who has moved on to digital photography -- has been asked by Eastman Kodak to shoot a few last rolls for posterity and the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and Dwayne's Photo will develop film through 2010.
We are firmly in the era of digital imagery now, and most of us are operating with much, much lower resolution than the estimated 20 megapixels to make images of the quality of those old Kodachrome images. I'm glad we all have cameras, glad that our Nedas are borne witness. But I will miss Kodachrome, which connected us simultaneously to the ugliness in this world and, in the same frame, its comprehensive, insistent beauty.
I haven't missed film since I was scanning negatives and spent 6 hours to repair 1 shot. Still, Polaroid is done and Kodak finishing the last of their films, positive or negative. My film ZLR still has a roll inside of it, since I don't have a battery to rewind it. Maybe, I'll just leave it intact for someone to dig up 300 years from now.
I sold a lot of film as there weren't even thoughts of a digital camera when I was selling photographic equipment. Imagine how many famous photos would have been lost had the photographer just deleted them because they weren't up to standard. National Geographic and Life magazines used to send out their photographers with huge bundles of Kodak film to capture the real world.
Now, we pick and choose so easily and anyone thinks that they can be a photographer just by spending some money. Kodachrome will be nothing more than a song in short time.
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|I love content, to collect it, bigger is better. But with "streaming content" they take away the bigger, take away the detail; leaving mush. It's the same with TV, over encoded, excessively compressed junk; It could be good.
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|one last post- here's a link that shows how photgraphy can capture a single moment and transform and weave it into a stunning quilt.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/...conic.images/index.html
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|I still have an SLR with some fantastic lenses. I've still be shooting some b/w film, but it is hard to justify the environmental costs of film production and processing when you have the digital option.
Someday, I'll get really good scans of all my old Kodachrome and Sensia slides and actually look at them again...
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|I still remember my 1st film camera- pentax K1000 and I remember to joy and abilty to transform B&W by adding or subtacting filters. Then the joy of pouring over a contact sheet to find that 1 in 100 photo to work with. So, even though have moved on (having a Nikon D90), I still miss the feel of film and don't think the Dslrs are there yet nor is the imaging programs. The new media presents opportunities and the ability to capture moments like never before so hopefully, the tech end will catch up but even with saying that, I am impressed with the moment of the experience (i.e. Neda)
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|Hey, mine too! Actually my first *two* SLR cameras were K1000s -- the first was stolen halfway through my year on the yearbook, and I didn't have the cash to go replacing all those lenses along with the camera itself. I wasn't really complaining, though; great, fun camera.
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|Didn't spend much on my SLR. But the quality from that SLR maybe $140 is so far above at least 10 mp, it doesn't compare. I only use the SLR now for images I wanna really keep forever. Once upon a time photography wasn't disposible. It is now. Just hit delete or maybe the hard drive dies (I have a fetish for backups.) or better yet some idiot steals a photo from some place online and places it in an ad in a foreign country. Film won't actually die, and can't see ordering it from Cuba. Maybe china. Just go to ebay and tons of stuff (fairly good too) from hong kong. 9/11/2001 I was taking a photography class around 9am when the world stopped. Not many remained in that classroom for obvious reasons. Sure there were the sony digital camera's with the 3 inch disks. And we knew digital camera were coming and most fanatics were pleased because it meant less of the precious silver would be used. (it makes up the emultion ) I don't think they thought it would kill film that fast. I still don't think it's dead. But it'll be mostly used as an art form. My choses media was always b/w film. And indeed I can do that with my Canon. Although in that case it's usually in sepia tone. :)
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|Having started with photography during the film era , it could do both the art and gave one the abilities to change a photo in B&W. There are some ,like Adam's, that draw you in and surround and there are others that transform you in the blink of an eye (Vietnam Picture). So I have move on to an DSLR.
Having seen that moment which has the same effect of transfixing us and yet giving us a little unease of invading does show the power of new media. Neda becomes the living testament to the horror the Iranians have witnessed. At that point, art merges with politics and life and transform us. I sincerely hope that each of us carries that transformation with us and begins to see the world a little differently even as we hustle and bustle with our daily activities.
To the Iranians I say "NEDA" and look with hope on the new media as a new way to transform in a single moment our view of the world.
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|i suppose that people who have invested a great deal of money in slr's may simply have to order film from cuba.
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