Kodachrome™

/Users/mignon/Sites/MN Web/Kodachrome 197908 Scotty on Tioga Pass 1200x458.jpgMy Female and the Wolfman crossed Tioga Pass on their first road trip with Hector Samuel, when returning from California to Ithaca, NY in August 1979
Kodachrome™ photograph 
© 1979 Mignon & Wolf Naegeli

According to my Female, Kodachrome is a movie to watch for the following reasons: You are into old-time photography, are a geezer-age photographer, still hold nearly worthless Kodak stock, like Ed Harris, crave tearjerkers, or have thousands of Kodachrome™ slides you never published; exactly like my Female — actually, the Wolfman has a few drawers full as well.

The film might be, very-loosely, based on (spoiler alert!) famed photographer Steve McCurry, who is, as far as we know, well and alive. His most famous photograph, I’m sure you all know: the zillion-times published, printed, abused, and copied 1984 “Afghan Girl.” The one of the piercing-blue-eyed young girl on the cover of National Geographic, decades ago.

The film ended—predictably—with lots of Curryish photographs that resulted probably from a producer’s search of stock photography.

Basquiat

 

Color photograph of the back side of an original 1979 Kodachrome color slide. The red inscription at the top reads, Kodachrome SLIDE. At the bottom left is the red and yellow Kodak logo and next to it are the words PROCESSED BY KODAK. To the right of the film window is a red plus sign. The image is upside down with the emulsion facing us, as we are looking at it from the position of a projection lamp. The projection lens would be on the opposite side of the slide and invert the picture bottom to top and left to right so it will appear correctly on a reflective screen.

To the chagrin of the many, many photographers who preferred Kodachrome’s warm tone over other available slide films, Kodak announced in 2009 that it would end manufacturing of the Kodachrome™ line of products.

Dwayne’s Photo lab persists in Parsons, Kansas, to this day. It was the last Kodak-affiliated lab to discontinue developing and processing Kodachrome™ in 2010, when the chemicals ran out. It remains one of the few labs that still offer traditional photo processing services.


Color portrait photograph of a tri-colored domestic short-hair cat. His narrowly open eyes appear beige. The chest and head are white, but he has a ochre spot on his right upper muzzle and a black and ochre tabby pattern in front of his ears and on top of the head. Only about one in 3000 male cats have three hair colors, which indicates that they have at least one extra X chromosome, similar to the XXY Klinefelter's syndrome in humans.

Hector Samuel  —  Kodachrome™ photograph © 1979 Mignon & Wolf Naegeli

One Comment on “Kodachrome™

  1. Loved seeing the old photo of you outside your car and camper – and I remember Hector Samuel’s little spot of brown, almost like a beauty mark, near his mouth.

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