A family packs up a station wagon, water skiers race towards the lens, and astronauts walk on the Moon: these giant Kodak photos once lit up Grand Central Terminal and revisiting them today is a strange and unsettling experience
A new two-volume book from Gestalten revisits Kodak’s Colorama, the 18m-wide backlit photographs that dominated Grand Central Station for 40 years.
Imagine the delight of commuters back in the day as they passed by a massive, 60-foot wide and 18-foot tall panorama in the east balcony of New York City's Grand Central Terminal. This stunning visual display, known as Kodak Colorama, graced the terminal from 1950 to 1990, showcasing an idealized version of American life. The publication, KODAK COLORAMA Archive, compiled 287 of these iconic images in a two-volume hardcover set, offering a nostalgic glimpse into the past.
These photographs, created using Kodak's large-format cameras and processed in a repurposed swimming pool, depicted everyday scenes with a perfect glow. From families packing up their station wagon for a summer at the beach to newlyweds emerging from a church, the images celebrated the notion of memory-making and social belonging.
The Colorama Archive even includes work by Ansel Adams and some of NASA's first images from the Moon's surface. While the original images cost a fortune to produce, the vibrant colors and large-scale presentation made them a captivating sight. Today, revisiting these images may feel strange and unsettling, as they represent a version of reality that never quite existed. However, they remain a joy to look at and offer a unique perspective on a bygone era.
Written by urgent.news from Digital Camera World's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
