The Last Roll of Kodachrome Frame by Frame!

A celebrated photographer makes a passage to Indiaand marks the end of an era. ByDavid Friend

Photographs bySteve McCurry

Two years ago, photographer Steve McCurry heard the whispers. Due to the digital-photography revolution, Kodak was considering discontinuing one of the most legendary film stocks of all time: Kodachrome, a film which was to color slides what the saxophone was to jazz. McCurry spoke with Kodaks worldwide -marketing wizard Audrey Jonckheer, hoping to persuade Kodak to bequeath him the very last roll that came off the assembly line in Rochester, New York. They readily agreed. And recently, McCurry most famous for his National Geographic cover of an Afghan girl in a refugee camp, shot on Kodachrome loaded his Nikon F6 with the 36-exposure spool and headed east, intending to concentrate on visual artists like himself, relying on his typical mix of portraiture, photojournalism, and street photography. Herewith, presented for the first time in their entirety, are the frames from that historic final roll, which accompanied McCurry from the manufacturing plant in Rochester to his home in Manhattan (where he is a member of the prestigious photo agency Magnum), to Bombay, Rajasthan, Bombay, Istanbul, London, and back to New York. (The camera was X-rayed twice at airports along the way.) McCurrys final stop, on July 12, 2010: Dwaynes Photo, in Parsons, Kansasthe only lab on Earth that still developed Kodachromewhich halted all such processing in late December. What did he choose to shoot on the last frame of that last roll? A statue in a Parsons graveyard (in the section reserved for Civil War veterans), bearing flowers of the same yellow-and-red hue as the Kodak package. (See Frame 36.) I saw a statue of this soldier,

looking off in the distance, says McCurry, age 60, and hes kind of looking off into the future or the past. I figure, This is perfect. A cemetery. Kodachromethis is the end of this sort of film [suggesting] the transience of life. This is something thats disappearing forever. And what, pray tell, will McCurry miss most about his old trusty chrome? (He happens to have shot, at last count, 800,000 Kodachrome frames over the past four decades.) Ive been shooting digital for years, he insists, but I dont think you can make a better photograph under certain conditions than you can with Kodachrome. If you have good light and youre at a fairly high shutter speed, its going to be a brilliant color photograph. It had a great color palette. It wasnt too garish. Some films are like youre on a drug or something. Velvia made everything so saturated and wildly over-the-top, too electric. Kodachrome had more poetry in it, a softness, an elegance. With digital photography, you gain many benefits [but] you have to put in post-production. [With Kodachrome,] you take it out of the box and the pictures are already brilliant. Never more, alas. Unless, of course, some chemist some day comes up with a way to replicate the complex, expensive developing process. Until then, McCurry is biding his time. I have a few rolls of Kodachrome in the fridge, he claims. Im just going to leave it there. My fridge would be kind of empty without them. If they ever revive Kodachrome like they did Polaroid, Ill be poised and ready to go!

Frame 1. Actor Robert De Niro in his screening room in Tribeca, in New York City, May 2010. (Frame 2, not shown, is a near duplicate.)

FRAME 3 De Niro in his screening room, May 2010. (Frame 4, not shown, is a near duplicate.)

FRAME 5 De Niro in his office in Tribeca, May 2010.

FRAME 7 Indian film actor, director, and producer Aamir Khan in India, June 2010.

FRAME 8 A boy in a tea shop in Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia, near Mumbai, India, June 2010.

FRAME 10 A sculpture studio in Mumbai that produces statues of notable Indian personages and Hindu gods, June 2010.

FRAME 11 Indian writer and actress Shenaz Treasurywala, in India, June 2010.

FRAME 12 Indian film actress and director Nandita Das, in India, June 2010.

FRAME 13 Shekhar Kapur, director of Elizabeth, in India, June 2010.

FRAME 14 Amitabh Bachchan, one of the countrys most prominent actors, in India, June 2010.

FRAME 15 A Rabari tribal elder, photographed in India, June 2010

FRAME 16 A Rabari tribal elder, photographed in India, June 2010.

FRAME 17 A Rabari tribal elder, who is also an itinerant magician, photographed in India, June 2010

FRAME 18 A Rabari tribal elder and itinerant magician, photographed in India, June 2010.

FRAME 20 A Rabari woman, photographed in India, June 2010

FRAME 21 A Rabari woman, photographed in India, June 2010.

FRAME 22 A Rabari girl, photographed in India, June 2010.

FRAME 23 An elderly Rabari woman, photographed in India, June 2010.

FRAME 24 A Rabari boy, photographed in India, June 2010.

FRAME 25 Turkish photographer Ara Guler (The Eye of Istanbul), in Istanbul, Turkey, June 2010.

FRAME 26 Street art at Seventh Avenue and Bleecker Street, in New York City, July 2010.

FRAME 27 Grand Central Terminal, in New York City, July 2010.

FRAME 28 A woman reading on a Saturday afternoon in Washington Square Park, in New York City, July 2010.

FRAME 29 A street performer in Washington Square Park, July 2010.

FRAME 30 Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt in his Central Park West studio, in New York City, July 2010.

FRAME 31 A young couple in Union Square, in New York City, July 2010.

FRAME 32 A self-portrait of Steve McCurry, taken in Manhattan, July 2010.

FRAME 33 A man on a bench in front of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Union Square, July 2010.

FRAME 34 McCurry at four a.m. in his hotel room watching a Stephen Colbert interview on television, in Parsons, Kansas, July 2010.

FRAME 35 A local man sleeps outside a community center in Parsons, July 2010.

FRAME 36 A statue in a cemetery in Parsons, home to the last photographic lab in the world that developed Kodachrome film, July 2010.

Watch as National Geographic Photographer Steve McCurry Shoots the Very Last Roll of Kodachrome
in Photography | January 22nd, 2013 Leave a Comment http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DUL 6MBVKVLI#t=86s Ask a photographer from the century that just passed to name his or her favorite film, and the answer, very often, will be Kodachrome. The crisp emulsion, beautifully saturated colors and archival stability of Kodachrome made it a sentimental favorite among photographers long after other, more practical color films had all but pushed it out of the marketplace. The problem was, the very qualities that made the film special stemmed from a highly cumbersome technical process. Kodachrome was a nonsubstantive film, meaning the dye couplers were not built into the emulsion, as they are in other color films, but had to be added during development. The process was complex, and few labs could afford to offer it. Even before the digital revolution, Kodachrome was an endangered species. So while it came as an emotional shock to many photographers, it was no real surprise when the Eastman Kodak Company announced in 2009 that it was halting production of Kodachrome. One of the photographers who had long-since moved on to digital imaging but who was saddened by the demise of Kodachrome was Steve McCurry, an award-winning photojournalist for National Geographic who is best known for his haunting 1984 image (shot on Kodachrome) of a 12-year-old Afghan refugee girl with piercing green eyes. When McCurry heard the news, he arranged to obtain the very last roll of Kodachrome to come off the assembly line at the Kodak plant in Rochester, New York. The challenge, then, was this: What do you do with the last 36 exposures of a legendary film?

The half-hour documentary above from National Geographic tells the story of that roll and how McCurry used it. The filmmakers followed the photographer on an odyssey that began at the factory in Rochester and ended at a laboratory (the last Kodachrome lab open) in a small town in Kansas. Over the course of about six weeks, from late May to early July, 2010, McCurry traveled halfway around the world to make those final 36 exposures. The resulting photographs iclude street scenes in New York and Kansas, portraits of a movie star (Robert De Niro) in New York, intellectuals and ethnic tribesmen in India, colleagues in Turkey and New York, and one of himself. Its a remarkable take. Although a few of the shots appear spontaneous, most are the result of careful planning. McCurry donated all 36 slides to the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, but you can see almost all of the photos online at the Vanity Fair Web site. As McCurry tells the magazine: Ive been shooting digital for years, but I dont think you can make a better photograph under certain conditions than you can with Kodachrome. If you have good light and youre at a fairly high shutter speed, its going to be a brilliant color photograph. It had a great color palette. It wasnt too garish. Some films are like youre on a drug or something. Velvia made everything so saturated and wildly over-the-top, too electric. Kodachrome had more poetry in it, a softness, an elegance. With digital photography, you gain many benefits [but] you have to put in post-production. [With Kodachrome] you take it out of the box and the pictures are already brilliant.