Four epochs of the photographs

We received this week the news that Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection, marking the demise of the analogue era. This event is a good opportunity to remember the history of the photographs. We discussed this subject in the class of Dart Jarman which was dedicatedto current events. I prepared four photos for discussion, which would represent four epochs of photography.

Let’s look:

1.)

This photos were taken 100 years ago by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and look as if they were taken yesterday. Between 1907 and 1915, Prokudin-Gorsky transported his photography-equipment in a special darkroom rail car. He printed the color photos by a method of his own invention.

2.)

The mid-20th century was an era of black-white photos for ordinary people and color photos for the professional photographers (look the famous photo of the Beatles). I remember this time. I made my photos using special equipment and chemicals in the darkroom. I stored my black-white photos in photo-albums. I couldn't imagine that doing color photos would be so easy thanks to Kodak’s technology.

3.)

This photo was taken in Copenhagen by me using a simple camera and was printed in a service-centre which used Kodak technology. We kept photos like this in albums. We admired the colors. It was only Kodak’s technology which allowed us to keep our memories in color. Thank, you, Kodak! But the times changed and today is epoch of digital photos.

4.)

This photo was made by my daughter on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal. If it was made 50 years ago it would have been a model photo for a magazine or for exhibition. This process so simple today. We have thousands of photo files in our collection. We don’t print them.

It was great of course. But we can remember a wonderful company which gave us the ability to make our own COLOR photos.

Thank you Kodak, your photos stay in the our memories...

Anatoly