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Photo Book Reviews

Colorama: The World's Largest Photographs (Aperture) Reviewed by Tina Maas Kodak's 18 x 60 foot photographs known as "Coloramas" graced Grand Central Station in New York City for 40 years.  The images now serve a nostalgic purpose, as they captured the American family life in the 20th century. Article rating: 4.50

This neat little book is a collection of “Coloramas”, the world’s largest photographs, which used to be on display at Grand Central Station in New York City. They were produced to promote early photographic Kodak equipment by showcasing elaborately staged idyllic settings from scenes of family life, images that became above all a visible manifestation of the widely promoted American dream.

Accompanied by two informative essays, one by Alison Nordstrom, who eloquently writes about the historical context of the Colorama and one by Peggy Roalf, who sheds light on the challenging production of the monumental displays from behind the scenes at Kodak, the book is a lovely keepsake commemorating the early beginnings of photography and their social connotations. Measuring an impressive sixty feet in width and eighteen feet in height they represented a truly pioneering attempt in this relatively new medium. The remarkable numbers of 565 Coloramas were painstakingly produced between 1950 and 1990 and are now part of the Kodak and George Eastman House Collection.

Following the development of technically superb, fine grain transparency film, Coloramas became financially feasible although still representing an engineering feat when during the early beginnings each panorama had to be composed of three separate pictures and exposed in a special enlarger as forty one segments that would be hand stitched to form one massive picture. Until the advent of the digital age they were literally the worlds largest photographs ever made from one negative. Equal credit should be granted to the technical achievement and the amazing sceneries, which are a true pleasure to behold.

The Coloramas give evidence of expert craftsmanship on behalf of the photographer as well as a clear indication of an enormous amount of effort and planning that went into each carefully and lovingly staged shoot. Spanning four decades of prominence, it is astonishing how all Coloramas have a surprisingly unified style given the variety of photographers assigned to produce them. They feature elaborate scenes with props, stylists, several actors and professional lighting offering the viewer an escape to a better future as much as an idealized version of a dream. Highly scripted and stylised, the smiling, attractive people populating the panoramas, often featuring vistas of classical American landscape, acted out the rituals of suburban life, a suburbia infused with loving patriotism and symbolizing American greatness and power.

For subject matter they looked for the events that defined suburban life such as loving family scenes at home, camping in the great outdoors, celebrations of national holidays, birthday parties, sport events and, later on, trips to European destinations. Anything which prospective consumers could relate to and might potentially like to take a snapshot of themselves. The idea of looking at the photographed event in the family photo album as a social event and attributing to it the same status as the activity itself, was coined by Kodak and strongly promoted by the Colorama, which in the early days used to feature the memorable scene as well as the resulting photo snapshots on the side. Every scene in these highly crafted pictures included an amateur photographer admired by his audience or subject. In the Colorama hierarchy men photographed women, women photographed children and children photographed their pets. Photography was presented as a social activity that would be inextricably linked to weddings, boat trips and holidays abroad. The camera itself was promoted as a memory-creating device. But throughout all Coloramas Kodak was careful to allude that any ordinary person, if in possession of the right equipment, could take the same beautiful shot.

Considering today’s media savvy population and advanced methods of advertising these early attempts at lifestyle marketing make us look back in amazement at historical art direction. The fact that they are most obviously staged to convey family leisure time at the same time as promote camera equipment is one of the chief attractions to the modern viewer. They appear so surreal to us that they could be easily mistaken for a contemporary fine art project if they were they not so meticulously dated and assigned to different photographers.

Reaching millions of mostly male, white collar workers commuting from the suburbs into New York City during the post war years, the strategically placed huge Coloramas in Grand Central Station influenced a generation of consumers and still remain a nostalgic icon for many. They were the first to establish the link between leisure, travel and family with picture taking, a revolutionary concept that reinforced American values and aspirations as well as stereotypes of the American dream.

Kodak’s Colorama campaign presented more than just product placement. Over the years it became a well known part of Grand Central, a nostalgic piece of history of how America viewed itself and they offered a hint of the popularity photography would attain in the world as we know it today.

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