Kodachrome -Post your images!

My dad had a Gremlin in 1975, it may have been a '74 model. By then it was already falling apart. He bought it in honor of the '63 Rambler station wagon that was one of the best family cars ever.



Mackinaw said:
I think 1975. K64. 10 points if you can name the car.

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Jim B.
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Larry,

Oh, man... Americana 50s style. Somehow I see parallels in our family's life with those you have revealed through your Kodachrome images... despite the "awful" but much appreciated black and white images I have collected of our own family's journey in life.

Times in the 50s were hard for most people but the euphoria of post-War life was evident in everything and foretold the changes that were to come. We were a Chevrolet family, but came to appreciate Fords like the Fairlane, too, Lol.., the first of many changes we came to embrace. It was a profound time.

The character of your images is beautiful and represents the nearest capture of a time that passed all too quickly. The quality of the slides themselves is astounding. The quality of the images, like so many here, are really admirable and puts to shame so many of my own over the years. I really wish I had used slide film, especially Kodachrome, more but it was near impossible to afford it in our family. Most were employed or retiring from work in the many textile mills in middle Georgia.

I was the first to even use Kodachrome but it was not until the mid-70s. How I wish I had the kind of images posted on this thread of my own family to view as Kodachrome slides/scans.

Thank you again for sharing these moments from your life. It is important and it is helpful to all of us. May we take away a better understanding of the times, the wonder of Kodachrome and how we can best approach making photographs for our grandchildren and their children to see and from which to learn many years from now just as we are doing with this thread.:)
 
There are some great examples of Kodachrome in this thread but the ones of American family life are simply terrific and deserve to be in a book.
 
dave lackey said:
Larry,

Oh, man... Americana 50s style. Somehow I see parallels in our family's life with those you have revealed through your Kodachrome images... despite the "awful" but much appreciated black and white images I have collected of our own family's journey in life.

Times in the 50s were hard for most people but the euphoria of post-War life was evident in everything and foretold the changes that were to come. We were a Chevrolet family, but came to appreciate Fords like the Fairlane, too, Lol.., the first of many changes we came to embrace. It was a profound time.

The character of your images is beautiful and represents the nearest capture of a time that passed all too quickly. The quality of the slides themselves is astounding. The quality of the images, like so many here, are really admirable and puts to shame so many of my own over the years. I really wish I had used slide film, especially Kodachrome, more but it was near impossible to afford it in our family. Most were employed or retiring from work in the many textile mills in middle Georgia.

I was the first to even use Kodachrome but it was not until the mid-70s. How I wish I had the kind of images posted on this thread of my own family to view as Kodachrome slides/scans.

Thank you again for sharing these moments from your life. It is important and it is helpful to all of us. May we take away a better understanding of the times, the wonder of Kodachrome and how we can best approach making photographs for our grandchildren and their children to see and from which to learn many years from now just as we are doing with this thread.:)
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Thanks, Dave.

I've been thinking of a response past "Thanks, Dave." but most of them are way too long. Much longer than the too long thing I feel I am about to post. The Taos shot was made with original Kodachrome ASA 10 and a Kodak Retina camera. It's not sharp, but would mean no more to me if it were..possibly less. We would have been, then, as a family, below the "poverty line" if there had been one at the time. Luckily the federal government had not yet chosen to forever stigmatize people with the label, so we didn't know. The multicolored dress my mother has on, she made herself. Life could not have been any better.

My father had survived the Normandy invasion, so, yes, there was something of a post-war euphoria about, money or no money. His father had come to the country from Italy with nothing and had worked his way, with help from no one, to building and owning the town's only hardware store, which bore his name on the front. All of which was lost during the Depression, then dad went to war, taking with him a camera. After the war, photography was his only real hobby, for the rest of his life. Most of the early things were black and white, but there was Kodachrome here and there. Just snapshots, nothing special.

There is definitely something to be said for threads such as this providing a "better understanding of the times". Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank are all good, great, photographers, which is a quality no one could ever attribute to my father or myself. The problem, and it has become a significant problem as it relates to people's understanding of postwar America, is that Lange, Evans, and Frank, etc all photographed America with an agenda, unlike the photos you see in this thread and in attic shoeboxes all across the country. What you see in their photographs isn't really America as a whole, it is a photographic representation for the most part of what was rattling around in e.g. Dorothea Lange's head, the things she found compelling at the time. They are great photographs but they are not representative of the country. Never were. The problem is that they have become so for many people who came later.

It is the photographs in the shoeboxes which give an accurate picture of America in the Fifties and earlier, not anything Robert Frank, bless his heart, ever did. As great as photographers like these, and many more, were, the things they documented were outliers. Unfortunately, the myth they created has come to be the only reality that people born after 1955 or so will always labor under. To use Marx's term, these famous photographers, unintentionally, created a "false consciousness" which, abetted by a steady stream of revisionist histories, young Hollywood scriptwriters, and other 'change agents', has now become, to people who didn't live it, the conventional wisdom. It's unfortunate, but trying to explain this to people who were not actually present is like trying to explain the Rose Bowl parade to a frog that has lived down a hundred foot well its entire life. "Leave it to Beaver" was actually closer to reality than anything revisionists have ever produced. Even Ken Burns is reliably "off" as well, no matter how carefully crafted. Yes, there were illusions we had, as everyone has, but they have been replaced by myths which paint it as a much less humane and appealing time than it actually was.

I apologize in advance for the aside, but I hear and see so much nonsense about America in the Fifties.

Yes, in a way, Dave, as you say, "times were hard". I grew up in a cinder block house, eating Spam. It was fantastic. It was the best of times. Apologies to Dickens, but 'the worst of times', those came later.

Please keep the photos coming, no matter when they were taken. The progression of the Kodachrome 'look' over time is also something which is being pretty well laid out here.
 
November or early 1966. Just another day in the neighborhood, typical weather for Southern California and the nearly year-round need for yardwork. My mom and one of our older neighbors, who lived across the street. Not sure of the camera, possibly an Exakta.
 

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Some how the photos look better than some of what I see today..
Maybe its the old lenses..or the 50's/60's mentality..
Maybe people knew their cameras a little better back then..
..or maybe..Kodachrome color..
I like em..!
 
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