Remember those commercials years ago that urged you to share "A Kodak Moment?"
Those were the good old days when pictures were taken with cameras and film that needed to be processed and then printed from negatives to achieve a finished product.
Believe me when I tell you, I had more than a few Kodak moments as a child. I was in a family containing a professional photographer. That was my mom who earned her credentials the hard way by apprenticing for years after passing numerous courses that were, I am sure, designed to weed out those who weren't totally passionate about the profession, which meant that her son was going to suffer too.
I recall several Kodak moments in photographic darkrooms wrestling with enlargers bigger than me, getting them in focus, dodging highlights and "souping" pictures in large trays of what smelled to me like toxic chemicals and probably were.
Ya, we used Kodak film and photographic paper and Kodak chemicals, but I also recall piddling around with similar products from companies named Ilford, Fuiji and Ansco. It seemed however, when we required the ultimate in quality, she always turned to Kodak.
Mom's retail store sold a whole pile of Kodak cameras too, from the early Brownie box to the Brownie Hawkeye and then the upgraded Starflashes and so on. Each one was slightly better than the other and the film sizes change, but you only got eight or 12 "shots" or photos per film until the 35 mm cameras came around. There were the Eastman Kodak slides that gave you wonderful colour productions but you needed a slide projector to display your work. Early downloading, I guess.
Mom's studio camera that she loved was a huge wooden structure with a vulcanized bulb for a shutter release and the "hooded" back end. It was marked Eastman No. 4, which probably made it rare even then. Huge lenses encased in brass kept me intrigued.
I recall more Kodak moments mixing "fixer" in the back doorway of the store, choking on fumes, stirring five gallons at a time. A painful process done with warm water and gentle addition of the chemicals until they dissolved completely. Sometimes I wasn't gentle.
I had more Kodak moments in a basement, souping what we always laughingly referred to as the "damn amateur." Those were rolls of films brought in by customers for "developing and printing." That meant I would be assigned the job of "stripping" the film, in total darkness of course. I developed a great sense of feel. Helen Keller had nothing on me. Then I got them in developer, neutralizer and fixer over specific periods, hoping the camera operator had produced some kind of image that could be turned to positive on a printer. Each customer was assigned an identifying number stamped on the back of each print so we didn't get them confused while they were getting dried on the drum dryer that circled around very slowly, turning wet prints into pictures.
When we got a fashionable new printer and drum dryer one summer, our studio offered "same day" photo service for those Damn Amateurs. Bring your film in by 10 a.m. and pick it up at 4, we advertised. In a world that was offering five and six day turnaround for pictures, this was an unheard of advantage. My sister's friend Patsy and I worked that entire summer slapping out damn amateur on a six-hour turnaround timeline, much to the amazement of customers. Patsy took charge and we took turns doing the "souping" in the tray and working the printer, hollering out if a photo was "too thin" or "too cooked," meaning the operator on the printer wasn't "reading" the negative's density correctly. That meant backing up and doing it over again. Patsy got paid. I think I got a new ball glove for my contributions and got to stay in the family.
Now I hear that Kodak has been left behind. It's a piece of pictorial history. It's bankrupt and off the rails and so instead of cursing their products, I feel a little sad because I grew up with Kodak. In many respects Kodak represented my childhood, both of them are gone. We move on.
