The Eastman Kodak Company announced yesterday that the camera film, immortalised by Simon’s 1973 hit Kodachrome, was being taken off the market after a run of 74 years.
Kodachrome was born in 1935 after a process invented by two musicians, Leopold Godowsky Jr and Leopold Mannes, a violinist and a pianist known as “God and Man” who were passionately interested in photography as a hobby.
The vivid colours of Kodachrome have captured some of the most famous wildlife imagery as well as many of the world’s best-known news photographs.
Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm reel of President John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination was shot on Kodachrome.
Kodachrome had a natural way of recording colour. It was incredibly fine-grained and for many years was the best way of getting maximum quality — the resolution was fantastic.
The top digital cameras would now probably supersede and give better quality when measured mathematically, but aesthetically Kodachrome had something you just can’t reproduce digitally.