Kodak Carousel ad 1962

. . . and good riddance.

As a footnote to my Kodachrome post, I should add that amidst all the outpouring of nostalgia for Kodachrome — which, I remind you, was a color-slide film — I have never ever heard anyone express fond memories of its necessary corollary for everyday use, the Kodak Carousel slide projector.

Prior to my engagement with the computer (which, for all its benefits, holds the frequency record as the technology at which I’ve screamed murderously), the most frustrating device required by my professional activity was the Kodak slide projector. Necessary in my line of work both for classroom teaching and for public lecturing, it haunted those situations with its ever-lurking unreliability: not just the occasional blown bulb and ensuing frantic hunt for a replacement, but the inevitable damaged slide tray or bent/stuck slide and resultant distracting unjamming procedure, the malfunction of the controller with its usually too-short cord, and other wonders. Not to mention the periodic inadvertent upside-down or reversed image due to careless slide insertion. It never dependably just worked, and Kodak never figured out how to make it foolproof. Or quiet. The company discontinued production of the final model (which, like some of its predecessors, featured autofocus and other updates) in 2004, so its production run lasted about 43 years.

Kodak Carousel 600 instruction manual

As if by magic, the slide projector seemed to bring out the archetypical Luddite in academics, even those who could operate radios, television sets, and cars with relative ease. It had the same effect on many photographers, presumably at ease with all kinds of devices. Despite the fact that the hand-held remote-control gizmo had a mere three buttons and barely changed its design in the thirty years I used it, unfailingly a scholarly lecturer or photographer would say “Now how does this thing work?” and then fumble with it, going forward instead of backward, decreasing instead of sharpening the focus, and otherwise messing with a mechanism that, while undependable, certainly wasn’t complex.

Kodak Carousel print ad, 1962

The classic instance of this projector-related incomprehension among academics came for me during a 1982 Rosalind Krauss lecture at the Society for Photographic Education National Conference in Colorado Springs. Krauss put one of Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” images on the screen early into her talk and left it there for a good twenty minutes while she divagated. Every user’s manual advises you not to leave a single slide on the screen for prolonged periods of time, but Krauss surely had never bothered to read the instructions for this technology she used regularly in her line of work. She has much more important things to do, as we all know, what with all that important theory urgently demanding to get generated.

Inevitably, the bulb generated heat in the small space between itself and the slide, warming the celluloid substrate that carries the image. The substrate swelled and buckled slightly, which popped the image out of focus. “Focus that,” Krauss would order. The conference-appointed intern serving as a tech for the lecture would jump up obediently and so so. Of course, a few minutes later it would happen again, and Krauss would repeat her command.

Finally, clearly frustrated, and evidently ignorant of basic thermodynamics, Krauss snapped, “This is a roomful of photographers! Doesn’t anyone know how to focus?” At which point the emulsion on the Sherman on the screen started to melt. A lovely moment.

Kodak 4400 Carousel Slide Projector

In any case, when I started using Microsoft Office I switched to PowerPoint for my slideshows, then moved to Apple’s Keynote. I’ve never missed the Carousel, nor looked back with an instant’s regret. No warm and fuzzy recollections here. Do I have company in my happy leave-taking? Does the slide projector have its advocates and defenders? If any reader wants to add to my deprecation, or to speak up for the slide projector (not just the Kodak variants, but some of the other species as well), or recount a memorable slide-projector experience, let ‘er rip.

Meanwhile, via YouTube, enjoy “Mad Men: The Carousel,” a scene from the 2007 season of the AMC series Mad Men (produced by Matthew Weiner) in which master Madison Avenue huckster Donald Draper uses a prototype of the then-new device to pitch Kodak on an ad campaign for its 1962 debut of the original Carousel, even giving it that name as part of the proposed campaign. You can also view an image-by-image version of his slideshow, captioned with the lines from his pitch.

— A. D. Coleman

Polaroid has begun to reinvent itself for the 21st century. As you’ll see at the company’s website, Polaroid hopes to reposition itself in the digital-imaging environment while building on its brand-name recognition and long history in the medium. More power to them. Inevitably, some of its earlier products will fall by the wayside during that process — to the dismay of their dedicated users. This represents elementary free-market economics in action. Type 55 film has become one of the casualties. . . .

I try my best to keep up with whatever news affects me as a member of our lens culture, I attend some of the trade expos, I talk with and listen closely to photographers, I observe at first hand what goes on in photo-education programs around the world, and I make a point of reading the handwriting on the walls. So, when Eastman Kodak announced on June 22 that it had ceased production of Kodachrome film after 74 years, I didn’t consider that at all surprising. Indeed, I found myself in the odd position of thinking “I told you so.”

Why should student artists get special tutorials in “the business of being an artist” when no one seems to think that student anthropologists need special instruction in the business of being an anthropologist? Do we assume that young artists, as distinct from young physicists or historians or literary scholars, are special-needs cases meriting the pre-professional equivalent of training bras to ready them for the elementary truth that once they leave school they’ll have to earn a living somehow?

Michael Rosen first published his book Vanilla Sex: Explicit Fine Art Photographs as a free PDF download. Rosen invited me to write the introduction to this project. My essay turned into a meditation not only on his work but on the state of sexually explicit photography in our culture — a subject to which I’ve turned my attention frequently over the decades. That PDF recently passed its 10,000-download mark, which strikes me as remarkable success for a self-published project on such a controversial subject. Now Rosen has published a printed version of the book, via Blurb.com. . . .

We lost Bill Jay this spring. He died peacefully in his sleep on Sunday, May 10, 2009 in Samara, Costa Rica, where he’d set up residence. He was born in London in 1940. I got to know Bill after he left England (where he’d served as the first director of the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London and also worked under the late Colin Osman as the first editor of the germinal UK magazine Creative Camera. In 1970 he founded the short-lived but extremely influential UK magazine Album.

In early 2007 one of my local institutions, the Staten Island Museum, commissioned me to respond in writing to a set of 49 photographs drawn from its extensive collection. The group consists of Island scenes depicted in lantern slides, commercially produced postcards, amateur photographs, professionally made group portraits, film stills, and assorted other forms.

In spring 2007 Chris Clanton found my posted material tracking Paul Kopeikin’s 2001 violation of my copyright and the copyright of three dozen other authors, and contacted me to describe his own situation. I responded at some length . . .

In 1972 photographer Neal Slavin and I organized and hosted an event we named the Market Diner Bash. It constitutes a time capsule of the New York scene circa 1972. Neal and I agree that it’s time to initiate a reunion of the participants in that event. So we have begun plans for The Market Diner Bash Redux, tentatively planned for September 2010.

Welcome to the blog Photocritic International. You can access it via the URL photocritic.com, and, as with any blog, you can subscribe to it. I plan to make new postings on a weekly schedule.