Kodachrome: First Great Color Film Remembered

Gulf of Mexico Pelican

Photograph by Luis Marden, National Geographic

A pelican flies over a stormy Gulf of Mexico in a 1937 Kodachrome photograph taken by Luis Marden, one of the color film's early champions at National Geographic magazine.

In 1935, when Marden first saw a demonstration of the film at a Washington, D.C., camera shop, he rushed back to the magazine photo lab to spread the news of the "amazing" medium, as described in the book The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery.

Marden called the new film, which created virtually grainless and vibrant color images, "a photographer's liberation, like being let out of prison."

Today, advances in digital photography have relegated Kodachrome to just a fraction of a percent of Kodak's total sales of still-picture films—prompting the company's June 22, 2009 decision to stop making the iconic product.

Published June 24, 2009

Norwegian Hikers

Photograph by Andrew H. Brown, National Geographic

The so-called Red Shirt School of Photography, which referred to the practice of using red elements, such as shirts, caps, and sweaters, to brighten photographs in National Geographic magazine (above, hikers wear matching red-tasseled caps in 1957 in Trollstegen, Norway), emerged during the 1950s.

At that time, a faster speed of Kodachrome film allowed photographers to move further beyond the rigid and posed photos required by slower color film processes.

Melville Grosvenor, editor of the magazine in the 1950s, said the red-shirt strategy helped enliven expedition photographs, which otherwise featured khaki-clad subjects: "There was no pep to it. But when a fellow had a red cap on—just a red cap—it would add a little color to the picture."

Published June 24, 2009

French Cable Car

Photograph by Walter Meayers Edwards, National Geographic

A National Geographic writer and his son wave from a cable car on France's Mont Blanc in a Kodachrome photograph published in the magazine in 1965.

The picture appears in the National Geographic exhibition "Kodachrome Culture: The American Tourist in Europe," which opened June 25, 2009 in the society's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Kodachrome had its heyday in the 1950s in the magazine, which published brilliant European scenes and helped spark a new generation of U.S. tourists.

Published June 24, 2009

"Afghan Girl"

Photograph by Steve McCurry, National Geographic

Perhaps one of the most well known Kodachrome photos, National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry's haunting portrait of an Afghan refugee appeared on the cover of the magazine in June 1985.

On a final expedition, McCurry will shoot some of the last rolls of Kodachrome film and donate those images to the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. (Listen to an NPR interview with McCurry about the demise of Kodachrome.)

Kodak has also compiled a tribute gallery of Kodachrome images, including the "Afghan girl" portrait, on the company's Web site.

(Find out how a National Geographic photographer named a landmark after Kodachrome, and view more milestones in photographic technology on the National Geographic Society's photography site.)

Published June 24, 2009