Kodak Retires Iconic Kodachrome Film

Eastman Kodak Co. announced this week that it was retiring its iconic Kodachrome film because of declining demand. Introduced in 1935, Kodachrome became the world’s first commercially successful color film.

Paul Simon sang about it, Abraham Zapruder used a reel of it to capture President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and photojournalist Steve McCurry had Kodachrome in his camera when he took a famous portrait of an Afghan girl for National Geographic in 1985.

Families made vacation slide shows with the film, and countless amateurs appreciated the rich colors brought out by the film processing. But the film wasn’t just for professionals, and it still had its admirers in the digital age. Yet sales of Kodachrome are just a fraction of 1 percent of Kodak’s film sales, and only one Kodak-certified lab in the country processes it (Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kan., in case you were wondering).

Below is a slide show of Kodachrome images, curated by the Kodachrome Project on Flickr. Started by photographer Daniel Bayer, the project is about “celebrating our world visually with the legendary film that is Kodachrome.”

Kodak has posted its own slide show. It’s available here.