I read with some dismay the news about Kodak's potential demise and the "Death of the Tangible" on NPR's web site. It was the same dismay I felt when our neighborhood Barnes and Noble fell to a CVS store despite aggressive community protests and when, shortly thereafter, another local Borders went under. The latter is now a derelict chunk of empty real estate and we have a "consumer value store" on every block.
Like independent bookstores, Kodak has been "shaken to its core by a digital revolution," according to an AP report. No surprise there. Once revolutions took place over the course of a generation. Now they seem to happen every year. Admittedly I'm sentimental about certain things that are disappearing in the analog world, and there's nothing more unhip these days than sentimentality, right?
Everyone loves their digital cameras - and there's nothing not to love. We can snap zillions of photos for a fraction of the cost, discard what we don't like, photo-shop them, upload them to Flickr, and share them through social media. Never mind that the vast majority of our photos end up stored in our hard drives, or that the uber-pervasiveness of the digital world has chipped away at the artistic realm where craft and vision converge. Everyone is a photographer. Kodak is on its last gasp. And old-fashioned photo albums, with their crackly plastic overlays and faded print narratives, are a thing of the past. Or are they?
Says Seattle-based photographer David Perry: "I do not think that traditional photography is dead, and do think there will be a renaissance, or rather, several small renaissances over time that will grow out of the visions of individuals who love a particular medium or love the unique look that results from a particular combination of mediums enough to source those increasingly elusive materials with which to create them. Rarity adds value in the art world. When film becomes scarce, its value will rise and that will create demand for images made the old fashioned way. But on any sort of large, scalable, commercial level, traditional film and paper, toxic chemical based photography is as dead as the Edsel."
Harry Saddler, an information and interaction designer and photographer, echoes the sentiment. "Although the new technology generally allows the 'old look' to be replicated (and initially, that's mostly what people try to use it for), eventually the old technology achieves a new appreciation for its particular qualities - not least, the association with the craft itself... the old technology is stripped of its workaday role, and becomes a specialty 'artisanal' technology."
The divide between the analog and digital world does indeed grow bigger every day and has an impact on the most basic things. Even handwriting seems antiquated (does anyone learn cursive anymore?) as the way we see, communicate, read (if we read) and experience time morphs. The idea of an 'artisanal' technology, however, is not unlike vinyl records, which have experienced a comeback. In addition to the more nuanced, tonal depth that comes with this analog medium, "people like the expanded experience of vinyl - larger covers, larger bells and whistles, the information of lyrics - anything that allows you to have a deeper relationship with the music that goes beyond consumption," says Gary Stewart, former iTunes executive with a lifetime of experience in the music business. "An old form of art or music never goes away if it's good enough or meaningful enough to a new generation."
This begs the question: what exactly will be good or meaningful enough to the next generation? Hard to pin a tail on that donkey when it's traveling at warp speed. So is traditional photography dead? Will ebooks replace print books? Will streaming Netflix replace movie theaters? Will YouTube replace traditional TV programming? Will future generations be born with prehensile thumbs? Only time, and the vagaries of technology, will tell.
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I'm sure in future business schools Kodak will be used as the perfect example of what happens when you believe you have become " To big to fail".
I am not surprised by the impact of the digital transition, but I am disappointed that their medical diagnostic products were not more successful. I had gotten my Ph.D. and moved on by the time they disposed of that effort, but I wonder if they under-invested in that area.
Eastman Chemicals, which they spun off, is doing well.
I believe that a clearer divide in the case of Kodak is based on brand - that having been one of the most evocative brand across the world throughout the 60s and 70s, it became over the course of the 80s a much more "tactical" company. Having embodied "wonderful family moments", it came to be synonymous with printer cartridges and
To me, the Kodak brand suggested that it was in the business of connecting families through photos. Sadly it behaved as though it was in the chemicals & print business - most sad of all is that it missed the opportunity to capitalise on so many of the opportunities that lay before it.
Raam Thakrar
Co-Founder, Touchnote
- Photo postcards from your mobile phone
- The simplest way to brighten someone's day
Old style photography will become a form of snobbery, exactly the way vinyl records have become.
Vinyl record snobs claim that records and turntables have "more nuanced, tonal depth that comes with this analog medium." A sound engineer will tell you these people are in love with an audio distortion that comes through the technology itself; not some deeper sound quality that was already inherently in the recording. In a way, vinyl snobs love the distortion they hear, not the actual sound intended by the musical artists.
Obviously, there will be people claiming that old style photography is superior because of this or that reason, which like vinyl recordings, were more about the limits of the technology itself, and not some superior visual presentation.
The chemicals they used to make their stock was a big secret, kind of like, what went into Col.'s Kentucky Fried Chicken. Guys used to get rashes up their arms when they worked with the stuff. Doctors couldn't figure what was in it never had to tell because they had a patent on the formula. . . I worked at Consolidated Film Lab, when it was called Technicolor and they sold the lab to the Japanese. Then they moved Technicolor next to Universal Studios and started developing 70mm. There they used to break the sound code in relation to how fast there film ran for development, running about three times faster than any other lab in Hollywood. It just show's you that the big money guys get away with special favors. I also got my senority taken away on the Technicolor roster for dating a union rep's daughter. The union rep's were apointed for life written in their by-laws.
They had the power to take away my seniority, but it wasn't fair. I guess you learn to take the good with the bad. Unions kept wages high and alocated work when there wasn't any. I remember when I was in the film technitions union it then merged with the Camera union and then everything went to video. I guess this is progress. Don't know, you tell me.