Can't do it in the dark anymore...traditional photography

Implosions of buildings 65 and 69, Kodak Park, Rochester, New York

October 6th, 2007

It is sad, but it is progress. I really feel that photographers lose the sense of the craft and artistic experience by not participating in the traditional methods of photography. All is digital now--too bad...you can't smell the electronic process or stain your hands.

"Photos of Film’s Demise: Empty Labs and Demolition Days Are Analog’s Farewell"

by

Pete Brook

November 8th, 2012

Wired

When Robert Burley photographed Kodak Canada’s final employee meeting in the parking lot on the last day of manufacturing in 2005, he assumed it was an isolated act of corporate downsizing — the winding down of one facility to safeguard Kodak’s other operations. He now knows he was seeing the first domino fall. Two years later, Burley was in Rochester, NY, the spiritual home and headquarters of the once-giant analog film manufacturer.

“Kodak was blowing up one huge building after the other,” says Burley a photographer and associate professor at Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts in Toronto, Canada.

But the decimation of the film industry didn’t stop with Kodak. Burley stumbled into a multi-year project for which he was to photograph the demise of multiple companies.

“A year later I was in Boston photographing Polaroid factories being torn down. To be present at these events made me realize I was witnessing not only a radical change in my medium but also a dizzying moment in history.”

It has been a helter-skelter decline. Take Eastman Kodak, for example. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2012 and — as part of its restructuring – sold off all of its photography divisions including “the broadest portfolio of traditional photographic paper and still camera film products.” Since 2003, Eastman Kodak has closed 13 plants and 130 laboratories.

This week, Eastman Kodak won court approval to quit providing health and welfare benefits to U.S. employees, retirees and dependents. It will save the ailing company $10 million per month but leave 56,000 people high and dry.

“Individuals may see their life savings lost,” said U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Allan Gropper, who delivered the ruling, before going on to say that — in spite of the financial pain to retirees — the company’s move was legal and reasonable.

Burley has traveled the globe over a period of six years and photographed Ilford in London, AGFA-Gavaert in Belgium, Polaroid in the Netherlands and even Dwayne’s Photo in Kansas, which became known as the last lab to develop Kodachrome. The resulting project, Disappearance of Darkness, is a bittersweet visual eulogy to film, shot on the medium whose demise it documents.

“The companies — some of them over a century old — laid off tens of thousands of workers, demolished factories the size of steel mills and found themselves in an economic free fall as their customer base shrunk from millions to thousands almost overnight,” says Burley.

In 2000, U.S. consumers bought 19.7 million film cameras. By 2010, sales were below 250,000. Film sales peaked in 1999 with 800 million rolls purchased in the U.S. alone. But in 2011, Americans bought a mere 20 million rolls. In 2012, smartphone sales grew by 58 percent, while point-and-shoot sales dropped by 17 percent. The iPhone 4 is the most-used camera today.

“Today the shift to digital media is almost complete but it appears unlikely that any of these once powerful, profitable and innovative companies will adapt to the twenty-first century,” says Burley. “Digital technology has changed the way we live our lives and to some degree the demise of the photographic industry provided a touchstone for just how rapidly these dramatic changes have happened.”

A book of the project, The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era, has also been published this month. It’s a smartly designed new hardbound book featuring 71 of Burley’s large-format photographs.

“The book marks a point in time when photography  – at least photography as practiced by the majority – ceased to be a physical medium,” says Burley. “Photographs are no longer material objects created on film or paper – they have become dematerialized data stored in a cloud somewhere else. This alters one of the photograph’s most important characteristics – it’s relationship to time and place.”

Part documentary, part devotional gesture, The Disappearance of Darkness includes essays of fantastic insight by Alison Nordstrom, curator at George Eastman House; François Cheval, chief curator of the Niepce Museum; and Andrea Kunard, associate curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada. There’s much to contemplate and as such the book is a photography nerd’s tome. Nordstrom writes:

    “The advent of chemical photography was sudden and celebrated. [...] Perhaps no technological invention since movable type has so profoundly affected how and what we know or remember, and how we understand ourselves. Unlike the start of this phenomenom, however, the end has come, in T.S. Eliot’s words, ‘not with a bang but  a whimper.’”

Even though Burley now sees the shuttering of former film manufacturers as “inevitable,” and even though he witnessed closures and demolition first-hand, he doesn’t yet know exactly what it all means.

“In another decade or two I think we’ll understand the exact nature of this fundamental change in photography,” says Burley. “How will this change our idea of the photograph as document, evidence or imprint of the real world? How will these changes affect the ways we capture, collect and store our personal and collective visual histories? What impact will these changes have on photography as an art form, a social or political tool, as a form of reportage? While my work doesn’t attempt to answer these questions directly I hope it at least provides a record and interpretation of photography at this significant moment in the medium’s history.”

According to Burley, disruptions like those generated by the digital transition will continue in a perpetual advance of imaging and technology.

“A camera is no longer just a camera,” says Burley. “It captures video, sound, GPS coordinates along with all kinds of other metadata. Just as the digital chip replaced film, some other device will soon supplant the chip and the idea of what a camera is and does.”

Neither the questions Burley faced in making Disappearance of Darkness nor his realization that the film industry is in its final throes have stifled his fond memories of film. He hopes that Kodak will continue to manufacture the beloved Kodak Tri-X black and white film, known for its speed, latitude and sharpness. But he knows it’s unlikely.

“Tri-X film has such an important place in photography’s history. It was the film of choice for Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Robert Frank,” says Burley. “It’s likely that all color photographic films and papers will disappear in the next five years. The movie industry is the last mass market to make the transition from film to digital but industry insiders suggest this will be complete by 2015.”

These are reflective times.

“In 10 years time, will I be able to show my students how Adams or Frank made a photograph?” wonders Burley.

Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era

by

Robert Burley

ISBN 9781616890957

The photographic materials and systems I’ve used throughout my career are disappearing at an alarming rate. Over the last five years, companies such as Kodak, Agfa, and Polaroid have been pushed into an economic free-fall as the demand for their long-established products has evaporated. The end of the analogue era is evident in the recent closings and demolition of large-scale manufacturing facilities dedicated to the production of conventional photographic products.

During the past five years I have photographed numerous facilities in Canada, the United States, and Europe where blocks of silver were dissolved in nitric acid, mixed with the tissue of animals, and coated onto film and paper so the world could make pictures. The goal of my work is to explore the places where the alchemy of the photographic process was practised on a massive scale over the last century. The essential feature of these factories was, ironically, darkness: manufacturing took place in the absence of light—a characteristic that has defined the photographic process since it was first invented in 1839. The act of photographing is often associated with a desire to record something on the verge of change or disappearance. In this case, my subject is the medium itself.

Use the blog's search engine for more photography posts.

Eastman Kodak...not dead and will reorganize

"Photography pioneer Kodak files for bankruptcy"

by

Jonathan Stempel and Liana B. Baker

January 19th, 2012

REUTERS

Eastman Kodak Co, the photography icon that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to shrink significantly, capping a prolonged plunge for one of America's best-known companies.

The Chapter 11 filing makes Kodak one of the biggest corporate casualties of the digital age, after it failed to quickly embrace more modern technologies such as the digital camera -- ironically, a product it invented.

Kodak once dominated its industry, and its film was the subject of a popular 1973 song, "Kodachrome," by Paul Simon.

The bankruptcy may give Kodak, which traces its roots to 1880, the ability to find buyers for some of its 1,100 digital patents, a major portion of its value. Kodak now employs 17,000 people worldwide, down from 63,900 just nine years ago.

"It is a very sad day even though we had anticipated it," said Shannon Cross, an analyst at Cross Research who has had a "sell" rating on the company since 2001. "If it emerges, it will be a much smaller entity."

According to papers filed with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan, Kodak had about $5.1 billion of assets and $6.75 billion of liabilities at the end of September.

In court documents, Chief Financial Officer Antoinette McCorvey said, without elaborating, that Kodak plans to sell "significant assets" during the bankruptcy. Non-U.S. units are not part of the Chapter 11 case.

Kodak also said it obtained a $950 million, 18-month credit line from Citigroup Inc so it can keep operating and avoid having to liquidate. It said it expects to complete the bankruptcy process in 2013.

"This is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak," Chairman and Chief Executive Antonio Perez said in a statement on Thursday.

Kodak's market value has sunk well below $200 million from $31 billion 15 years ago, when its share price topped $94.

The shares began trading on Thursday on the Pink Sheets. By the end of the day they were down 6 cents at 30 cents each.

WAY BEHIND

In recent years, Perez has steered Kodak toward consumer and commercial printers.

But that failed to restore annual profitability, something Kodak has not seen since 2007, and did not arrest a cash drain.

Kodak has struggled to meet its pension and other obligations to more than 65,000 workers, retirees and others who participate in its employee benefit programs.

McCorvey said Kodak ultimately suffered from a "liquidity shortfall" as some vendors stopped shipping and providing services, and demanded shorter payment terms.

Kodak said in court papers it has about $820 million of cash and equivalents, but was down to just $56.7 million of cash in the United States.

"They got behind the curve on the analog-to-digital shift, and they were way behind for a long time," said Ananda Baruah, an analyst at Brean Murray who covers Kodak.

The company's downfall has also hit its Rust Belt hometown of Rochester, New York, with its workforce there falling to about 7,000 from more than 60,000 in Kodak's heyday.

Andrew Cuomo, New York's governor, on Thursday called the bankruptcy "difficult and disappointing news" for the city, whose population was about 211,000 in the last census.

Kodak named Dominic DiNapoli, a vice chairman at business turnaround specialist FTI Consulting Inc, as its chief restructuring officer.

The investment bank Lazard is also providing advice and has been helping Kodak look for a buyer for its digital patents. Kodak's law firm is Sullivan & Cromwell.

Last week, Kodak reorganized its business operations, creating a commercial unit and a consumer unit. It previously had units for consumer digital imaging; film, photofinishing and entertainment; and graphic communications.

Mark Zupan, dean of the University of Rochester's business school, said "there's still too much value" at Kodak for the company to be forced to liquidate. "Segments will be profitable enough to survive as a leader, as a smaller company."

LITIGATION STRATEGY

Perez, who has been chief executive since 2005, said the bankruptcy would help Kodak maximize the value of patents related to digital imaging, which Kodak said are used in virtually every modern digital camera, smartphone and tablet.

"I've talked to companies who will buy assets who said they were waiting for Kodak to go bankrupt to pay a better price," said Baruah, the Brean Murray analyst.

In the last few years, Kodak has used extensive litigation with rivals such as Apple Inc, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co and Taiwan's HTC Corp over those patents as a means to try to generate revenue.

Among Kodak's many creditors are retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp, and movie companies Sony Corp and Walt Disney Co.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp is the largest unsecured creditor, in its capacity as trustee for creditors, with more than $670 million of claims.

APOLLO 11

According to Kodak, George Eastman, a high-school dropout from upstate New York, founded the company in 1880 and began making photographic plates. To get his business going, he splurged on a second-hand engine to make the plates for $125.

Within eight years, the Kodak name had been trademarked, and the company had introduced the hand-held camera as well as roll-up film, where it became the dominant producer.

Eastman also introduced the "Wage Dividend" in which the company would pay bonuses to employees based on results.

Kodak went on to create famous cameras such as the Brownie, launched in 1900 and sold for $1, and the Instamatic in 1963.

The company on its website said a Kodak camera was used on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. A Kodak camera was used by the astronauts to film the lunar soil from only inches away, according to NASA.

Kodak film has been used on 80 movies that have won Best Picture Oscars, according to the company.

Six years after Apollo 11, and not long after songwriter Simon told his mama not to take his Kodachrome away, Kodak invented the digital camera.

The size of a toaster, it was too big for the pockets of amateur photographers, whose pockets now are stuffed with digital offerings from the likes of Canon, Casio and Nikon.

But rather than develop the digital camera, Kodak put it on the back burner and spent years watching rivals take market share that it would never reclaim.

In 1994, Kodak spun off a chemicals business, Eastman Chemical Co, which proved to be more successful.

Kodak's final downfall in the eyes of investors began in September when it unexpectedly withdrew $160 million from a credit line, raising worries of a cash shortage.

PENSIONS IN FOCUS

It remained unclear how Kodak will address its pension obligations, many of which were built up decades ago when U.S. manufacturers offered more generous retirement and medical benefits.

Many retirees hail from Britain, where Kodak has been manufacturing since 1891. The company had promised to inject $800 million over the next decade into its British pension plan.

McCorvey, the chief financial officer, said in court papers on Thursday that she expects the trustee for the British pension plan to have a "significant" general unsecured claim against the company.

The case is In re: Eastman Kodak Co et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

"Kodak files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy"

by Steve Sink

January 19th, 2012

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Eastman Kodak Co., running short of cash and unable to sell 1,100 digital imaging patents that could have rescued it, filed Thursday for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

The iconic Rochester company, whose history dates to the late 19th century and the technical and marketing genius of founder George Eastman, has been besieged for the past three months by rumors that it would make a bankruptcy filing. Those rumors had intensified in the past two weeks.

"After considering the advantages of Chapter 11 at this time, the board of directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak," CEO Antonio M. Perez said in announcing the decision.

The filing listed assets of $5.1 billion and debts of $6.75 billion.

Perez assured employees that it will be business as usual under Chapter 11. "Kodak expects to pay employee wages and benefits," the company said.

As of a year ago, Kodak had 7,100 employees in the Rochester area and 18,800 companywide. The worldwide figure is now 17,000, the company said in its bankruptcy papers, about 8,000 of them in the U.S. It did not give a new Rochester-area figure.

At its peak in the early 1980s, the company employed 62,000 people in Rochester and 130,000 worldwide.

Kodak has about 25,000 retirees in the region, so the company's legacy is a powerful one in Rochester.

The filing was made in the Southern District of New York, a common location for major bankruptcy cases because the New York City metropolitan area has the infrastructure of banks, law firms and other institutions needed to handle complex legal matters.

Citigroup Inc.. one of the largest banks in the U.S., has committed to providing Kodak with a $950 million credit line to help sustain the company's operations while it reorganizes its finances.

Kodak said it expects to continue operating its businesses while in Chapter 11, "and to continue the flow of goods and services to its customers."

Perez said in a video statement on Kodak's website that the company has four objectives while in Chapter 11 -- obtaining the financing to reassure its employees, customers and other stakeholders that the company will stay in business; enabling it to pursue patent infringement claims against major companies including Apple Inc.; adjusting its "legacy costs" to a fairer level; and driving growth in the printing businesses Perez has declared are its future.

The filing wasn't a surprise, though no one outside the company knew precisely when it would come. Kodak was scheduled to report its 2011 fourth-quarter and full-year financial results on Jan. 26, and it may have become apparent to company officials that the news would be bad, leading to a pre-emptive move into Chapter 11.

Kodak had said in November that it was in danger of being unable to pay its bills at some point in 2012 unless it received a substantial infusion of cash. What seemed like the best potential source of cash was the sale of its digital patent portfolio, which analysts said could fetch up to $3 billion.

Kodak had said in November that it was in danger of being unable to pay its bills at some point in 2012 unless it received a substantial infusion of cash. What seemed like the best potential source of cash was the sale of its digital patent portfolio, which analysts said could fetch up to $3 billion.

But judging from the company's statement today, it now thinks it will have a better chance of selling the patents under court supervision.

"The business reorganization is intended to bolster liquidity in the U.S. and abroad, monetize non-strategic intellectual property, fairly resolve legacy liabilities, and enable the company to focus on its most valuable business lines," Kodak said in the release.

Perez has insisted that Kodak would return to profitability this year as it pursues a strategy of building several key business lines -- digital printing presses, package printing, commercial and home inkjet printers and workflow software. The company's traditional film business, though still generating substantial revenue, continues to shrink and just last week lost its status as a standalone operating division within the company.

Under Chapter 11, a company continues to operate while seeking to reorganize its finances. Many companies emerge successfully from Chapter 11.

However, some stakeholders in Kodak figure to be hurt by bankruptcy — especially retirees whose health benefits could be reduced, although such a step can only be done under the supervision of a bankruptcy court judge.

Other Eastman Kodak items...

A giant may be dying...Eastman Kodak Company

KODACHROME--gone

KODACHROME film...died in Parsons, Kansas

Kodak and the Palomar telescope advertisement

A giant may be dying...Eastman Kodak Company

"Eastman Kodak fights for its future"

by

Matthew Daneman

December 11th, 2011

USA TODAY

This is not the "Kodak moment" expected of a longtime technology giant.

After losing money 12 of the last 15 quarters, Eastman Kodak is struggling to avoid bankruptcy protection.

Its stock is worth less than a dollar. Its employees are worried about jobs. Retirees fear losing their benefits. And suppliers worry about getting paid.

Yet despite the drumbeat of negative news, CEO Antonio Perez and his management team insist that Kodak (EK) will survive.

"We have fulfilled and remain committed to fulfilling all our obligations," Perez reiterated in a conference call with Wall Street analysts last month.

How far the mighty have fallen in less than a quarter of a century.

The year 1988 was a good one for Eastman Kodak.

The iconic photo and imaging company's worldwide employment peaked that year at more than 145,000, with workers turning out everything from cameras and motion picture film to floppy disks and pharmaceuticals. Kodak finished the year with a profit of $1.4 billion, roughly $2.5 billion in today's dollars.

It was also perhaps the last unqualified good year for the company and the beginning of the end of its role as an industrial giant. Stiff competition from Fujifilm and then the explosion in digital photography — a technology Kodak researchers invented in 1975 — have left Kodak reeling. Its stock, which averaged $25 five years ago and $5 in 2010, closed down 5 cents Monday at 84 cents. Worldwide employment is now below 19,000. Seeing no turnaround in the near future, credit rating giants Moody's and Fitch have downgraded Kodak's debt further into junk-bond status, signaling a higher risk of default.

"I do think it's often overly simplified" to say that Kodak's troubles are the result of it missing the digital boat, says John Ward, a former director of new product development at Kodak, who left the company in 2005 after more than 20 years and is now a lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology's Saunders College of Business. "The digital business was not going to be nearly as profitable as the film business in any respect. The film and chemical business was one of the all-time great business models. A lot of the change was going to come whether Kodak aggressively embraced digital business or not."

But it has been a long fall for one of America's most iconic companies

Those were the days

Kodak was founded in 1881 after inventor George Eastman pioneered a means of mass producing dry plates — the precursor to film.

Over time, Kodak grew into a global industrial and commercial giant, with "Kodak moment" becoming synonymous with a treasured memory. The Kodak logo and its little yellow boxes of 35-millimeter camera film were found around the globe.

Kodak's hometown of Rochester, N.Y., became the quintessential proud company town, says Daniel Tessoni, an assistant professor and corporate governance expert at Saunders College, which was founded in large part with donations by Eastman.

"The company was very, very generous to its employees and the community," says Rochester Business Alliance President Sandy Parker. "You had a patriarch, almost, that took care of the community. The senior people at Kodak served on virtually all the key boards in the community."

And when it came to big community projects, Parker says, "If Kodak gave thumbs up, we knew others would follow."

"It wasn't just a big employer," says Rochester Mayor Thomas Richards. "It's the University of Rochester. The Eastman School of Music. The Eastman Theatre. RIT. Those are all part of where Kodak's wealth went. We're lucky. If we were a steel town, like South Buffalo, what you got left with was an empty factory."

While Kodak's decline has exacerbated the evaporation of good-paying manufacturing jobs, highly trained former employees "have started businesses all over town," Richards says. "It's left us with a good legacy."

Narrowing its focus

Today, Kodak is in the midst of the latest in what have been almost constant reorganizations since the 1990s. Perez early this year said 2011 would be a tough year as it scaled back its stagnant digital camera business, focusing just on profitable models and markets, and the company's traditional film business continued to shrivel. The company's turnaround goal focused on four small but rapidly growing product lines it hoped would start to turn the company's sliding fortunes around in 2012: consumer and commercial inkjet printing, packaging printing and workflow software.

Before the recession, Kodak had 11 growth businesses. But with the global economic downturn, "we made some choices" of which to invest in, says Kodak Chief Financial Officer Ann McCorvey. "The four growth initiatives we're moving toward are at that intersection of digital imaging science and material science. We chose to try to grow in a place where we have unique capabilities."

Kodak says it is seeing some success, and expects its desktop inkjet printer business to turn profitable next year.

But 2011 is turning out to be a tougher year than anticipated. For the year, Kodak expects losses of $400 million to $600 million, up from the $200 million to $400 million it previously forecast. And the four product lines it is counting on for its turnaround are now projected to have revenue growth of 25%, not the 30% to 40% the company had hoped for this year.

Collins Ink, a Cincinnati manufacturer of the majority of inks used in Kodak's digital printing presses, ended its supplier agreement with Kodak in October, saying it fears Kodak could go bankrupt soon and leave suppliers with uncollectable bills. (Kodak sued and won a preliminary injunction forcing Collins to continue following the terms of the supplier agreement.)

And with $2.5 billion in pension and post-retirement liabilities, Kodak has tens of thousands of retirees who are worried about the future of their health care coverage. Kodak already is in the midst of a 10-year plan that eliminates coverage for retirees' spouses and shifts more costs onto retirees. Given Kodak's finances, further cuts seem likely, says Bob Volpe, president of EKRA, a Rochester-based Kodak retiree group. "It's a matter of when," he says.

Kodak's management and latest turnaround strategy have come under some fire. Calling the turnaround direction a failure, New Jersey investment management firm Investment Partners Asset Management wrote some of the biggest Kodak shareholders, urging them to push Kodak to add business-turnaround experts to its board or managerial ranks or sell itself to a company that could better commercialize its assets.

However, argues, RIT's Tessoni, "There's no indications I can point to that management did not attempt to find additional innovative products. But it just never worked."

Putting its assets to work

Kodak's headway in pushing its growth initiatives has been overshadowed by the ongoing drop in other businesses, says James Kelleher, an analyst at Argus Research.

To bridge the gap until those businesses grow, Kodak has been aggressively selling whatever it can.

This year, it has unloaded such assets as its image-sensor business, its silver business and its microfilm business. It has been marketing its sprawling 900-acre Eastman Business Park manufacturing campus to prospective outside tenants as an industrial park.

But its biggest potential sale is yet to come. Kodak is shopping 1,100 digital imaging patents, which some analysts have said could carry a price tag of as much as $3 billion. Kodak said last month it may borrow as much as $500 million while it seeks a buyer for those patents.

Kodak also is in an intellectual property fight before the International Trade Commission with Apple and with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion over digital imaging patents. A ruling in Kodak's favor could mean as much as $1 billion for the company, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky. An ITC hearing in that case is scheduled for Dec. 30.

Today, the company's biggest risk is that it gets broken up when it in fact has sizable potential, says Mark Kaufman, an analyst with Rafferty Capital.


KODACHROME film...died in Parsons, Kansas

KODACHROME--gone