Yellow Boxes No More

People who read this blog from time to time may remember my lamenting the end of Kodachrome film. This wonderful brand in its various incarnations had signified photography itself for me back in the (now) rose tinted 1960s. The yellow boxes which had brought my Kodak Instamatic colour slides back to me represented moments of great anticipation and joy. There remains a battered old suit case in my garage, containing dozens of them still. They hold hundreds of surviving transparencies which "I will eventually finish scanning and organising ..... someday soon".

Even as we read of the last Kodachrome production run, many of us realised that the final days for the Kodak company itself, could not possibly be far distant. When Kodak filed for bankruptcy a week or two back, there could not have been too many people who were actively surprised.

You don't need me to tell you how much Kodak dominated world photography, how the Box Brownie transformed the lives of our families, how many fantastic innovations it brought us over the generations and how many people it once employed around the world. Kodak was a true industrial giant - a legend of western culture and a personal friend which stood beside us at our daughter's wedding, our son's graduation, our mother's 80th birthday, our annual holidays to the seaside, the completion of our new home etc etc etc

It was in the movie "Jurassic Park" that two characters discussed why dinosaurs shouldn't be brought back to live again in the modern era. The argument went something like, "They had their time and simply can't exist in OURS" In the case of Kodak I guess that must be right. Somehow, while noises are still being made about the company returning from the grave like some latter day corporate Lazarus, I think we all know that Kodak has really been consigned to history. Hell of a shame ... but inevitable, I guess.