A Photographer's Eulogy for Eastman Kodak

By Michael Chiusano

I think I share the feelings of photographers around the world that there is something incredibly sad about the recent bankruptcy of Eastman Kodak. Companies large and small go out of business every day, it is the way our system works, and for the most part, nobody pays much attention. But this time it’s different. There just seems to be something wrong about it. It almost feels as if an aging patriarch has been taken down, after a long and valiant struggle. We know these things happen, we know nothing lasts forever, but somehow our lives seem diminished by the loss of “the great yellow father”, a photography company that once stood astride the whole world of images--imperturbable, reliable, ageless.
And it was once so. For roughly a hundred years, an eternity in the business world, the forward march of Kodak was taken as a foregone conclusion. The company seemed unstoppable, indeed was attacked as a predatory menace by government and competitors early on, as Geor...