damn shame... RIPKodak is one of the worst companies for enforced political correctness in the whole United States. I've been boycotting them for years. It serves them right that in concentrating on political correctness, they've lost the competitive edge to allow them to develop industry leading digital imaging products to replace their silver halide technologies. They've been living off their old reputation and goodwill for too long.
Here's a link to a related thread.
Kodak shares plunge as bankruptcy fears escalate
YahooFinance ^ | Sep 30, 2011 | MICHAEL LIEDTK
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2787139/posts
Posted on 10/3/2011 10:48:51 AM by Daffynition
That actually made me tear up a bit.
damn shame... RIPThe company either did not see or ignored the threat of the disruptive technology that was digital photography. Polaroid made the same mistake.
He said they looked at him like he was crazy and ignored him from there.
I agree. I have done business with them for years. Never in my career have a seen a more broken corporate culture. Every meeting has a “Cast of Thousands” where no one wants to make a decision. People change positions like Musical Chairs, and there is no accountability along the way. Once Rochester’s great employer, now a mere remnant of the past.........
In the mid-80s my group was working with Kodak on a new product line. We were going to purchase the product. One day a hatchet man showed up with the Kodak development team. The message was “you fund our remaining development and purchase the product at an inflated price and these people won’t get laid off.” We didn’t bite.
I used Kodak slide film for years until I finally had to go with Fuji. Boy was Kodachrome a great product. I have color slides my Grandparents took from the mid 40’s that are so vibrant in color, you would have thought they were shot yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZpaNJqF4po
I thought they had died a long time ago. I have not seen a roll of Verichrome Pan 127 roll film on the shelf in many years.
Hasselblad went to the moon.
Kodak copiers were a silly misadventure.
Google search for Kodak Political Correctness
I agree about the layers of useless management. I worked at a subsidiary called ATEX all through the 1980’s. Same mentality there until almost 1990. Absolutely clueless. An article about a 10% RIF appeared in the Boston Globe the morning before it happened. Upper management dismissed the report. Because, as they said, “it was only a 9% RIF”.
One can look at a company as a “scale model” of a company. It may start out on a very good tact, with good economic policy and thinking. It may even prosper for awhile on past glory. But, eventually, with enough of the wrong people in the wrong places at the wrong time, it can begin to collapse, and when it reaches a sort of critical mass of mismanagement, nothing can stop it from winking out of existence.
Modern Art Photography
If we consider the history of creating imagery from primitive to the modern there must be certain timelines that account for how things happened. The ancients in the region recorded their thoughts, left messages and depicted their lives on the canyon walls, in their caves and on any media they found useful. Certainly all cultures found their own way to communicate; the talented few always came forward as their recorders of history. Were these talented few born with the creativity? Or did they develop this talent through intensive training in the technical process?
If we spring forward a thousand years we have the benefit of watching the evolution of the form. Although photography dates back to Leonardo da Vinci's inventions during the Renaissance, the modern camera was invented in the 1830s with daguerreotypes. The first cameras were large and bulky, so people came to the photographer's studio to have their pictures taken. This meant that the main purpose was to record what people looked like, which could be done more quickly and inexpensively than ever before. This has had a profound impact on art, and has prompted many artists to explore new styles. And so, modernism was born.
In painting and printmaking the form evolved into what was called “the new art,” beginning with the impressionists in about 1870. Photography continued recording the accuracy of what people looked like or to record history as evidenced during the Civil War with Mathew Brady. Here in Utah C.R. Savage was one of the first to record the important history. In southern Utah Jack Hillers accompanied John Wesley Powell in 1872 in the explorations of the Grand Canyon.
The science of the form drove their technique. But was it art? Most imagery was posed and not impromptu as evidenced by E.S Curtis and his circle. Images looked stilted and did not leave much to the imagination. But suddenly we spring forward to the turn of the twentieth century and the group formed in New York by Alfred Stieglitz.
Stieglitz was originally a leading figure in the promotion of the idea that photography harbored the same aesthetic potential as painting. He fostered the progress of artistic photography in this direction by showcasing the work of young photographers who challenged the dominant conception of the medium. Instead of showcasing the use of photography as a tool for documenting or depicting the details of nature, these young photographers attempted to show, primarily through imitation of painterly styles, that photography could attain status as an art form.
This new approach to art photography was inspirational for all that followed the form. They strive to do more than record the images of nature, rather they make a serious effort in creating art; art that is beyond simple imagery. This approach to modernism was introduced to the painter Maynard Dixon in 1920 when he met the young New York photographer Dorothea Lange. Dixon began distilling and simplifying his approach.
This period, 1920-1960, brought Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and several other modernists to these regions for the purpose of making fine art photography. These were the purists with serious bias about their art form in black and white. Much of the art occurred in the darkroom. And then there was the life of photographic paper. The argument was that color would not hold. As color was introduced in the late thirties the art photographers held steady with their beliefs about the power of black and white. Several pioneers broke away from the old beliefs as papers improved with newer coatings and a better lifespan. Eliot Porter and David Muench in particular continued with the science of color as an art form.
And then digital happened. All of the old ideas about the art form changed.
After thirty years of work in all the above, Modern Art Photography was born. Suddenly new converts having found their own voices in this new digital world. The technical side of the problem is conquered with powerful technology from Canon and Nikon. The science is now taken care of and it is only left up to the artist to find his own voice in this brave new world.
ub, Copyright 2009
It used to be if you got a job at Kodak you were set for life. Sad to see it’s a dinosaur now.
Companies come, companies go...adapt or die.
I worked there as a software engineer
The woman in charge was an idiot so I told them I was leaving and gave two weeks notice
The idiot woman told me I couldn’t leave. I insisted for the two weeks that I was going. She honestly thought as the boss she could ORDER me to stay. She came from a government agency (20 and out!)
When I didnt show up the next Monday after my two weeks notice I got about 20 phone calls asking where I was, including several telling me I had to come to a meeting they would organize to explain myself.
I told them I didnt work there any more and I was not planning on coming to their meeting. They CALLED me from the meeting...
Then when they found out this idiot woman didnt know anything about writing software and needed to call me back to finish it about a years later, I found out I was on their ‘black list’ because I left and they could not hire me back. (Remember- THEY called ME to come back, because I was the only one who was able to make it work)
Libtards, all of them
Those who still have grandad’s stock certificates for E.H.& T Anthony are laughing in their hats.