A Kodak Brownie IV from the late 1950's ©Tony Bartholomew
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s
a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away
From the 1973 album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon” by Paul Simon released some years before I had picked up my own first Nikon, a black FM ! The demise of Kodak and the many reasons behind its fall from power are being well documented at the moment, but it made me start looking for some old images made on Tri-X which is what most press photographers of a certain age were brought up on. I did find some old pics, and I was reminded how much I used to enjoy getting into a darkroom and printing, much more than I enjoy using photoshop. Okay it was smelly, dirty and ruined more ties and shirts than I care to remember but you felt like a craftsman if you turned out a great print, which was in turn then sent to a sub-editor who then completely ruined it with a savage crop to fit the page. Amongst the box of old prints I picked out a couple of images taken before the mass move to colour printing in newspapers – nothing too special, but ones I can remember printing.You can see they are spare – or “gash” prints by the odd scratch or blemish which I have left untouched.
Fly Fishing on the River Swale ©Tony Bartholomew
Durham Regatta on the River Wear ©Tony Bartholomew
To get back to the problems of Kodak, needless to say both of the images here were almost certainly taken on Fuji Neopan, a real favourite film . The picture of the old Kodak Brownie at the top of the post was taken on my Fujifilm X100. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work this one out really.
