RIP Kodachrome Film
It’s the end of the line for Kodachrome, the first commercially successful color film, created by Kodak in 1935. The iconic film will no longer be processed, as Thursday marked the last time Dwayne’s Photo — a lab in Parsons, Kansas — was willing to accept Kodachrome rolls that needed developing.
Kodachrome’s demise was first announced in June 2009. Kodak cited a decline in sales as photographers had traded their old film for digital memory cards — or, in some cases, newer films. This meant that the company also stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film.
As The New York Times reported Wednesday, there was a time when there were about 25 labs in the world that could process Kodachrome film. But the number of labs began to decline a few years ago when the last Kodak-run facility in the U.S. closed, followed by another closure in Japan and another in Switzerland. Dwayne’s Photo was the last place still developing Kodachrome, but last week, the lab opened the last of the chemicals used to process the film.
Even though Kodachrome saw diminishing sales toward its end, this is the end of an era for a number of photographers and photography buffs. The film — currently trending at number seven on Google
in the U.S.
in the U.S.