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| The 2004 Aperture Colorama book (ISBN 1931788448) |
The thousands who used Grand Central Terminal daily must have been in awe of these huge colored photos that changed every few weeks from 1950 to 1990. The book has eighty-three of the 565 that were displayed over the years. A previous book (Aperture ISBN 1931788448 which I reviewed in 2004) about Colorama only had forty-three presented in a thin landscape title and rather annoyingly some of the images were trimmed.
The intro refers to Kodak's snapshot aesthetic to create the impression that any consumer could buy the company's camera and film and then take snaps just like the sixty-foot wide version they saw every day at Grand Central. If only...the Colorama photos were carefully staged, especially the interior ones featuring aspiring, white, middle-class nuclear families taking photos in their suburban homes. Colorama 314 from 1968 called 'Children breaking wishbone' has a son and daughter leaning over a table with the turkey, pulling the wishbone, ma is behind the smiling dad who has the camera and is about to click away, watching on either side of the room are the smiling grandparents. No doubt hours of work were involved in setting up this domestic tableau and also time taken to select the six models who had to represent exactly the ideal family in Saturday Evening Postland.
On the back pages, there is an index with eight largish thumbnails on each spread of all the photos in the book and it's possible to see that Kodak did their best to vary the shots, several featured tourist spots around the world, New York World's Fair in 1964, the 1971 moon landing, animals get a look in with pandas, a cheetah, koalas, deer in the snow.
The book is nicely produced and includes four fold-out pages. I don't suppose now that any publisher will have a go at doing a book with all 565 Colorama photos that millions of commuters saw in the now-distant past.
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