Steve McCurry, a famous photographer whose image of an Afghan girl with brilliant green eyes for National Geographic has become iconic, has been given a great and sad gig—Kodak has handed him the last production roll of Kodachrome to take and shoot. He’s doing it in grand style, traveling all over the world, with a film crew shooting a documentary about it.
I wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic when I was a teenager. I knew nothing about how to do that, and for numerous reasons I won’t go into I never found out or took the chance. I played it safe with a nice steady lab job and didn’t pursue a dream. Oh well.
But I have nevertheless made some images of which I am very proud. Here’s one:
I just finished Photoshopping this and doing some work on it to make it more what I wanted it to be. There are reasons for the abandonment of film, yet I feel sad. Kodachrome had a special look and it was for a long time my favorite film. The idea that Kodak won’t be making it anymore—or any of its other films—is just too weird to me. I remember when they purged their paper line. They once made dozens of types of photographic paper (b & w) in a variety of surfaces and in the mid to late 70s they discontinued 90% of them. The market was changing, resin coated paper was becoming popular, sales flagged on the harder-to-use fibre papers…
Still, it’s a loss. I will be very interested to see what Mr. McCurry does with that final roll. Meantime, like most of the rest of us, I’m learning to do this digitally.
Gotta say, it has possibilities for me that are very seductive.
Both images were shot in New Mexico.