Enlightened Librarian: Dreaming in Kodachrome

Dreaming in Kodachrome · Jan 7, 12:47 PM

Given the rapid rate of digital camera adoption,¹ photographic film will this year edge closer to the abyss that swallowed rotary telephones and Edison Wax Cylinders. I already feel a sort of anticipatory nostalgia for the happy colours of film packaging, those little plastic canisters that serve no useful purpose and the folded sheets of exposure advice that no one ever read.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not so much of a crank that I think digital photography is a bad idea. Eventually I’ll succumb to the enticements of instantaneous results and developing without tears. It’s just that, for me, the pleasure of photography comes only partly in the exposing of decent frames; the other part is the stuff—flash cords, screw-on filters, a good supply of film in the fridge—that are part of the largesse of one’s hobby. Film photography is about materiel, and the satisfyingly physical act of admitting light through a shutter to expose an emulsion that is immersed in a chemical bath. Film is also about using a physical medium to cheat time and decay, a gentlemanly contest of chemistry and good care versus the time-wearing effects of light and heat.

Such a contest is rendered moot by digitization—in theory at least. Yet compact disc manufacturers typically peg the lifespan of a CD—the most typical storage medium for digital photos—at about 100 years. That, give or take, is about the same longevity ascribed to one of the best photographic films ever produced: Kodachrome slides.

When Charles W. Cushman started taking slide photographs in the late 1930s, he settled for nothing less. As a result, the Charles W. Cushman Photography Collection captures an astonishing record of one American’s life over 30 years. Here are street scenes from 60 years ago preserved in such vivid colours that the intervening period falls away: the past is now.

An Indianan whose varied career included work as an editor, statistician, businessman and civil servant, Cushman was an obsessive documentarian, and the collection—some 14,500 slides taken between 1938 and 1969—is wonderfully catalogued. It’s easy to spend hours browsing by a myriad of subjects—clothing, locations, activities—or choosing a year and following Cushman’s photographic decisions frame by frame, and roll by roll.

There are many beautiful pictures—try this or this—not the least because they look as though they were taken yesterday. There are also many that are kind of pedestrian, poorly exposed or both. But his less-than-stellar work just makes the collection all the more charming—and valuable as a complete archive. Cushman knew he had talent, but also wasn’t afraid to show his warts when he donated all of his photos and his camera equipment to the University of Indiana at Bloomington upon his death in 1972. (The university’s library digitized the collection and launched a web site in 2003.)

Cushman’s photos say: don’t discount the old stuff. There were miracles of permanency preserved on film, just as (with luck) today’s digital photos should promote fascination and curiosity a century—or more—from now.

¹The research firm IDC predicts that there will be more prints made from digital images than from film in 2006, and digital prints will account for over 70 percent of all prints by 2008.

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