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Whenever a large corporation files for bankruptcy, tongues wag over what went wrong, the role of corporate greed in the actions and the impact it will have on the general population. People get a little nervous each time an airline, department store chain or manufacturer declares bankruptcy to "reorganize" its debts (translation: get out of paying your creditors), but don't usually dwell on the matter. Who, in all sincerity, can offer sympathy to a company that has turned its elite upper tier of executives into millionaires but will, in all likelihood, now leave its retirees in the dust?
While I'm not exactly sympathetic to Eastman Kodak, the news that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week did sadden me. Sure, the writing had been on the wall for quite some time, but to see this 132-year-old icon that has documented generations of life in America and beyond now struggling to the point of bankruptcy is a bit difficult.
What is life, after all, without all those Kodak moments?
Kodak has been a big part of my life pretty much since birth. Although my parents did not yet own a camera at the time, a few members of our extended family did, so when we got together there would be lots of photos snapped of various family groupings. Up through my middle elementary years, the cameras of choice were typically the Kodak Brownie box models, the ones you held steady between your chest and waist to look down into the viewfinder. A couple of the more financially advantaged relatives with no young kids to drain their extra funds even had a flash gun they could attach to their cameras. The inverted dome mirror held a small bulb that miraculously flashed at the precise time you pressed the button to snap a photo. OK, so the smell of burning plastic afterwards was a little annoying. It was still really neat.
These cameras produced square, glossy, bordered photos that often had the month and year in fine print along the border. Since zoom and telephoto lenses were pretty much limited to the professionals at that time, the vast majority of these photos featured tiny people with minute heads.
One of my brothers acquired a 1960s model of the Instamatic in the early 1970s, a significant step up from the bulky box camera. For one thing, it was much more compact. You could simply snap on a disposable flash bulb that held four shots when you needed the light. And rather than moving around in several contorted positions in order to get just the right view, you simply looked straight through the viewfinder to your target.
Whenever a large corporation files for bankruptcy, tongues wag over what went wrong, the role of corporate greed in the actions and the impact it will have on the general population. People get a little nervous each time an airline, department store chain or manufacturer declares bankruptcy to "reorganize" its debts (translation: get out of paying your creditors), but don't usually dwell on the matter. Who, in all sincerity, can offer sympathy to a company that has turned its elite upper tier of executives into millionaires but will, in all likelihood, now leave its retirees in the dust?
While I'm not exactly sympathetic to Eastman Kodak, the news that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week did sadden me. Sure, the writing had been on the wall for quite some time, but to see this 132-year-old icon that has documented generations of life in America and beyond now struggling to the point of bankruptcy is a bit difficult.
What is life, after all, without all those Kodak moments?
Kodak has been a big part of my life pretty much since birth. Although my parents did not yet own a camera at the time, a few members of our extended family did, so when we got together there would be lots of photos snapped of various family groupings. Up through my middle elementary years, the cameras of choice were typically the Kodak Brownie box models, the ones you held steady between your chest and waist to look down into the viewfinder. A couple of the more financially advantaged relatives with no young kids to drain their extra funds even had a flash gun they could attach to their cameras. The inverted dome mirror held a small bulb that miraculously flashed at the precise time you pressed the button to snap a photo. OK, so the smell of burning plastic afterwards was a little annoying. It was still really neat.
These cameras produced square, glossy, bordered photos that often had the month and year in fine print along the border. Since zoom and telephoto lenses were pretty much limited to the professionals at that time, the vast majority of these photos featured tiny people with minute heads.
One of my brothers acquired a 1960s model of the Instamatic in the early 1970s, a significant step up from the bulky box camera. For one thing, it was much more compact. You could simply snap on a disposable flash bulb that held four shots when you needed the light. And rather than moving around in several contorted positions in order to get just the right view, you simply looked straight through the viewfinder to your target.
What an innovative thing!
Although my much older brothers often took turns snapping photos of things like our cat at the time, the beet plant view behind our mailbox and their adorable baby sister, they were pretty conservative due to the cost of not only the film but also the developing.
The came my fifth-grade Christmas. My brothers pitched in to get my folks a brand new Kodak Instamatic kit that came with film, a strap, flash bulbs and case. Mom was less than enthused, appearing to be almost scared of this foreign gadget. She very nervously tried her hand at snapping a few photos, then more or less bequeathed it to me.
Oh, the glory! I could not wait to return to school and show off this wonderful invention to my friends. My picture-taking abilities were far from the semi-professional quality they are today, mind you, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Having snapped a few photos of my friends and teacher, I eventually had one of them take a picture of me that day. Now, this photo did not depict me at my greatest; donning my new coat from Gibson's, I had a pouty face because someone had just dropped my beloved camera and I was afraid it was broken. Of course, it wasn't, or the photo, which I still have today, would not have turned out so well.
The Instamatic stayed home after that.
That Instamatic got put to very good use for a few years, although some of my earlier snapshots were more or less a waste of film. It didn't take me long, especially when I had to pay for the developing myself with my hard-earned babysitting money, to become more discriminatory in my choices of what and when to snap.
Once the even more compact Pocket Instamatic model, using 110 instead of 126 film, came out, it was time to set the Instamatic aside, although it still worked great. Instead of square prints, the pocket version produced rectangle photos that could fit more stuff in them. Plus, it was so much easier to tote around, with its built-in lens cover.
Just as the Instamatic covered my middle school years, my pocket camera, which I purchased with babysitting funds just prior to entering high school, documented most of my tenure at Central High School. Tomes of scrapbooks and photo albums attest to my hodgepodge of hair colors and styles, groups of friends, changing clothes styles, proms, parties and pretty much everything, interesting or not, that took place around here in the late 1970s.
These Kodak moments could not have been captured if not for the affordability and ease of operation that Kodak cameras provided. See next week's column for more on Kodak's impact on this particular life.
