Colorama (Kodak)
The term Colorama describes a backlit image. Coloramas were invented by Eastman Kodak . Coloramas exhibited these for the first time in the ticket hall of Grand Central Station in New York. They became known as “the greatest photographs in the world”. Their size was about 6 m in height and 18 m in width.
A total of 565 Coloramas were exhibited in Grand Central Station from 1950 to 1990. These included photographs by Ansel Adams , Ernst Haas and Eliot Porter .
Particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, the pictures presented an image of America of classic American values and the typical " American way of life ". Typical motifs were the American family, vacations, travel and sports.
The Coloramas are considered to be Kodak 's largest marketing project . The production of the pictures was extremely time-consuming, because because of their size they had to be put together from several individual photographs and assembled in the form of a large number of individually developed parts that were then glued together. However, the result should always appear as if they were simply taken as a snapshot. Adolph Stuber, Vice President of Marketing and Sales: "Everyone who sees a Colorama must be able to imagine taking such a beautiful picture himself."
literature
- Colorama: The world's largest photographs. Aperture Foundation, New York, NY 2004
Web links
- Report in the New York Times about the end of the project
- Information about Coloramas on the Kodak homepage