I ask myself how would I use the last roll of Kodachrome? Renowned photographer Steve McCurry (below) clearly had something in mind last August when Kodak announced that it would no longer produce the slide film, the world's first successful and finest color film.
McCurry contacted his friends at Kodak and asked for the last roll, and spent the next nine months planning how he was going to use the last 36 frames. In June, he left on a six-week trip to capture the images, followed by a TV crew from the National Geographic Channel, which will be made into an hour-long documentary.
“I thought, what better way to kind of honor the memory of the film than to try and photograph iconic places and people? It's in (my) DNA to want to tell stories where the action is, that shed light on the human condition” said McCurry.
In the United States, McCurry shot the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Terminal and Robert de Niro, who represents the filmmaking industry. Paul Simon, despite the song he wrote about the film, declined to participate.
McCurry then went to western India where he captured Bollywood stars and the Ribari tribespeople in Rajasthan, which is said to be disappearing (like the film).
McCurry’s last shot was in Parsons, Kansas, the home of Dwayne's Photo, the last photo lab in the world that processes the elaborately crafted color-reversal film. Dwayne's will close that part of its business on December 30,2010.
He also included himself in one self-portrait, he posed next to a Kodak-yellow taxicab bearing the license plate PKR 36 -- the code name for Professional Kodachrome film.
Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away!
The slides will go, appropriately, to the George Eastman House in Rochester.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Associated Press
