In 1973, Paul Simon sang: "I love to take a photograph/So mama don't take my Kodachrome away." His mother may have listened, but Kodachrome's maker will not: after 73 years, Eastman Kodak has announced it is withdrawing the film.
Famous as the film used by Steve McCurry in 1985 to portray an Afghan girl with green eyes, recent years have seen a sharp decline in sales, according to the company.
Said Mary Jane Hellyar, the president of Kodak's film division: "It was certainly a difficult decision to retire it, given its rich history. However, the majority of today's photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology, film and digital."
Kodachrome now accounts for less than 1% of the company's sales of still-picture film. As well as competition from Japanese rival Fuji Film, Kodachrome is complex to manufacture and complicated to develop – in fact, there is only one lab left in the US that can do so.
Introduced in 1935, Kodachrome was the first colour film to see commercial success. McCurry's National Geographic portrait is the best known example of its capacity to capture colour, but he too has switched to digital or other film. In a statement, he said: "In fact, when I returned to shoot the Afghan Girl 17 years later, I used Kodak Professional Ektachrome Film E100VS to create that image."
Underscoring the decline of film, the company that popularised consumer photography more than 100 years ago said that today 70% of its revenue is from consumer and commercial digital business.
Photographer Peter Guttman paid tribute to the brand. "Kodachrome was for me the visual crib in which my photographic dreams and visions were nurtured. I credit Kodachrome as my most reliable tutor, educating my eyeball with an awareness of the delicacy of light and the subtleties of colour."
Today's photographers will have to go elsewhere to capture "those nice bright colours/They give us the greens of summers" that Simon sung about.
