The home of George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak stands on East Avenue, Rochester. It contains a museum, cinemas and photographic and film archives. It was visited by Margaret, Steve, Chris and Dian on consecutive days
The house itself reflects the the need to position its owner as a successful industrialist and philanthropist. Success at the turn of the last century meant a combination of high art and conspicuous consumption tempered with philanthropy. The innovative aspect of the building are hidden in its construction, which utlised fireproof construction of reinforced concrete with steel doors.
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The Eastman house was completed in 1905 and its gardens acknowledge the influence of Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll. The dining room was the responsibility of McKim, Mead and White, fresh from the refurbishment of Theodore Roosevelt's Whitehouse. The Roosevelt era influence is also reflected in Eastman's safari trophies, prominently displayed in the double storey conservatory. |
The original site of Eastman's business is on State Street, now a decaying inner city commercial area. The city hosted a range of companies, many of which were absorbed by Eastman Kodak. This concentration derived in part from the presence in the area of German instrument makers, displaced by the same events of 1848 which led to German migration to South Australia and the establishment of the Barossa Valley wine industry there.
Surviving companies include Bausch and Lomb, who concluded a technology agreement with Carl Ziess of Jena for the manufacture of photographic lenses. They now focus on soft contact lens and Rayban sunglasses. The presence of the Haloid Company prompted the relocation from Oklahoma City of the Rectigraph photographic copier invented by George Beidler. Haloid eventually acquired Beidler's Rectigraph company and became Xerox. The Photostat copying machine developed in Kansas City in 1907 by Oscar Gregory was manufactured in Rochester under agreement with Eastman.
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Rochester now terms itself the "Image Capital of the World"
Given the above history, the narrative presented at the Eastman House is intriguing.
Eastman's genius was in separating a complex set of craft skills from the act of photography. His aim was to allow a concentration on the image rather than the process. The killer advertising slogan was "You push the button - we do the rest" which promoted a pre-loaded camera which was returned for processing and re-loading. By removing the chemical processing stage from the hands of the photographer, Eastman created a mass market of amateur photographers. Yet this disintermediation process inevitably brought about another level of disintermediation. The technical exhibits include a number of technological dead ends into which Kodak (and various competitors) locked both themselves and their customers, producing cameras using only dedicated film that soon went out of production.
Four introductory panels each "framed" by one of the above statements (sponsored by the Ford Motor Company) "frame" the narrative which is presented through galleries which separate the development of the technology from the images and their social impact.
Understandably the exhibits celebrate the achievements of Eastman and link him to Edison in the pioneering of the motion picture. Appropriate acknowledgment is given to European pioneers of photographic and cinematic techniques, and Eastman's inspiration from the British Journal of Photography noted. The museum and archives contains a remarkable collection of artifacts and archival material.
(Short history published by Eastman Kodak in 1992 and sold in museum shop)
The totalising nature of the claims made on the introductory panels makes the treatment of the digital image and its capacity for instantaneous distribution by individuals problematic. Emphasis is on the traditional chemical route to image making. The digital technologies which Kodak has developed are presented as an adjunct to the photograph. Emphasis is on post-production in the form of image editing suites, both for commercial publication and for amateurs who can adjust their own images at the printing stage. The Photo-CD is presented primarily as an efficient storage medium for photographs produced in an essentially traditional fashion.
The consumer web-site maintained by Kodak at www.kodak.comcontains a section which promotes the use of digital technology. The introduction of a Photo-CD processing option which returns a CD version of a processed film to the customer as JPEG files sits nicely with George Eastman's original customer philosophy of the pre-loaded camera, especially as this service is also available for single-use disposable cameras.
Arguably the greatest threat to the mass market of consumer photography is the entirely electronic medium of the domestic video recorder (currently in the process of shifting to digital standards) which allows a significantly different form of record to be made.