A Kodak Family

At one point, I asked my father to help me name how many people in our family worked at Kodak and tell me what they did. This is an incomplete list and does not include countless distant relatives -- or the families of pretty much my whole high school and many in college -- but I thought I'd share it at this point.

It's a window into a time when (for better and for worse) a town was an industry and an industry a town and folks worked 30+ years at and for only one company. The closest I've experience I have had to this is here in Boston meeting folks who worked at Polaroid. Consider this an open post to share any company, industry, or trade that has persisted in your family. I'd be curious to know!

Let's see.. Wow!!!!

Dad: all over (claim to fame: he named T-Max)
Mom: Secretary
Brother: Fork lift operator in high school
Uncle: Master mechanic
Uncle: 126 Film loader
Aunt: Secretary
Uncle: Plastic molding operator
Cousin: Personnel
Cousin: Emulsion making
Grandfather: Roll film paper coating
Great Grandfather: Tin smith
Great Uncle: Paper mill
Great Aunt: Secretary
Great Uncle: Art department
Great Uncle: Distribution
Great Uncle: ?
Great Uncle: ?
Great Aunt: ?
Great Uncle: ?

Off to Rachacha - 15 miles on the Erie Canal...

Bruce and I are off to Rochester, NY for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary and my father's 70th birthday. On Sunday, my parents have rented a boat on the Erie Canal for a couple of hours (departing from Spencerport). Ought to be fun! We'll see lots of friends and family.

I'll try to post while I am there, but in the meantime, here are some great maps and postcards of the Erie Canal. According to wikipedia, construction lasted from 1817-1825 and the original canal was 363 miles long (today the whole system is 524 miles).

The above image is a 1906 postcard from Vintage Views (which has great vintage postcards and timelines too) of the Upper Genesee falls in downtown Rochester. Bruce has always remarked that we don't see enough images of Rochester's wonderful waterfalls. They are really gorgeous!

Below is a map from ShipsBlog, a site about exploring the NY State canal system by boat. Click for a larger view.

5 Things Meme (long overdue)

I was tagged...a long time ago! The "Five Things Readers Don't Know about You" meme was going around and it came to me. I did an earlier post to buy myself some time and included an explanation of the word "meme" and some links, but then this main post languished in my drafts box. Below, I present 5 things that some might know, but many may not. I figured most won't know all of them, so I will repeat some of my favorite odd stories here and with few family ones sprinkled in -- at least now they'd be all in the same place. Jeremias Paul, who tagged me, tried to track this meme to find its source. Thus, without further ado, I present:

1.) My dad named T-Max film

Yes, it is true. He presented several variants of TriX and ~Max, including TMax. As he was a company man, he received no compensation, but has the letter framed in his office. Older Kodak folks at trade shows know him simply as "Gordie."

2.) My brother and I were exposed to tuberculous when we were younger

Neither of us have it, but if we get a "tine" test, it would come back positive. We have no idea when or how this happened. Both of us were put on a medication and xray regimen for a year. The drugs basically killed the bacterium. All the doom and gloom aside, I feel in good art and historical company; many artists, authors, and musicians had TB. When I took a seminar on modernism in graduate school, I read a fascinating paper that compared Kazimir Malevich's abstractions to the spread of tuberculous and bacteria in petri dishes, both in terms of formal and philosophical concerns.

3.) My last name should be Green, not Brown

My grandfather was born in Cuba to Christian missionaries, the Greens. My great grandparents came to Cuba not knowing how tough it would be to raise a family. My great-grandmother died in Cuba when my grandfather was 2 and my great-grandfather couldn't still minister, provide, and take care of the kids so some went to family, others to friends. He was adopted by family friends in the US, the Browns! Thus, I should be Leslie Green - technically.

3.5) This same grandfather helped to design the engine on the first plane to break the sound barrier, Model B-29, the Bell X-1. He went to Syracuse for aerospace engineering but never finished due to the depression and later worked for Bell Aircraft of Buffalo. He died when my father was 18, so I never met him. The plane is on display at the Smithsonian.

4.) In elementary school, I participated in a super geek thing called "Olympics of the Mind"

Yes, I was one of those kids pulled out of classes occasionally to attend "gifted" sessions. In elementary school, this was so NOT cool. It was not fun to stand up, walk out of class with everyone watching and walk down the hall. In retrospect, it was amazing and taught me creative problem solving. We got to do all this cool stuff like make up board games and play with early computers and robots (programming a turtle to make math shapes). I believe it was fourth grade in which I started doing doing the competitions, which are now called "Odyssey of the Mind," but my group participated in the "build a balsa wood structure" problem. We had to build a light weight structure out of balsa wood and glue. Weights would be periodically placed on top of it and occasionally a billiard ball would come crashing into it on the side. While all this was happening, we also had to dress up and sing a song (our song was based on Kermit's "Rainbow Connection"). Much as in the Pinewood Derby, the kids that won definitely had adult help!

5.) Ansel Adams printed this picture of me (see below)

As you can probably see by now, my Dad is a font of great stories and experiences. During his Kodak days, he was the rep to the Ansel Adams workshops in the 1970s. He had heard that Ansel, at some point during a demonstration, would ask for a negative. So, my Dad put one in his pocket and saddled up beside him. When asked, my father furnished this negative to Ansel. He burned, dodged, and then printed it and then afterwards called my dad over to sign it and give it to him. My father, a RIT grad, was thrilled to meet the master, but his heart sank when he heard what he had to say: "Thank you so much for letting me print this. It's always great to demonstrate on a problem negative." That's me, age 2, sitting on the grounds of Sonnenberg Gardens in Canandaguia, NY in 1975. I guess I was a good compositional element early on!

I have a few more that I will use as Monday Show and Tells (including, bowling and painting). Whew! Done!

From the Archive

My father worked for Kodak in various departments for over 33 years. That was his arena, thus I painted and drew and eventually grew up to be an art/photohistorian, but it was inevitable that I got into the business in some way. He often shares some amazing stories from his days at the yellow giant and all the people he worked with and met, and if it's ok with him I will share some from time to time here. In addition, I fear that these oral stories from the golden days of the photo industry giants are being lost, and especially those from the people who were behind the scenes and in the technical trenches. (I heard similar stories from Polaroid employees, in particular the self-proclaimed "the goo people," when doing a Polaroid exhibition.) Growing up in Kodak town was and still is a huge part of my life. While in Oxford one summer in college, for example, we met a British professor who asked us if we really could throw our film into the Genesee river to develop it.

Here is a fun picture of my Dad in his darkroom, circa 1968. I remember him saying this was a special enlarger head, one that hadn't been released. I will check again with him on the identity various accouterments and post the details later. Long live the darkroom (or at least film!).

Addendum: 1/6 I just found this old IM exchange that I saved

Leslie: what kind of enlarger is that??

Leslie: i am doing a powerpoint presentation, thus my flurry of images

Gordon: That was an experimental Kodak enlarger with an attached color computer that would set the right color filtration automatically.

Leslie: in 1968???

Gordon: It was based upon the old Kodak Precision B enlarger, but was highly modified. It never went into production but I got it working