If there is any one product that has to do with my own personal success (and millions of other photographers too for that matter), it is Kodak. When I was going to Brooks Institute School of Photography, it seemed that nearly everything we used was Kodak yellow and red. Kodak fixer could indeed fix anything, we were only as good as the Kodak film we shot, and color was Kodak vibrant. Like many other professional photographers, I love the company and what it has done for the culture of photography. So it with great sadness that I learned of Kodak’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January and their intent to exit the digital capture business.

It’s like Apple dropping computers or Jack Daniel’s switching to milk. It ain’t fittin, as they say. You really know that the world’s gone to hell if Kodak isn’t making photographic stuff. Fuel up the rocketship.

Kodak essentially invented the concept of “the snapshot,” with the very first Kodak camera in the late 1880’s. For the first time, nearly anyone could make a photograph. Their motto was “You push the button, and we do the rest.” For all intents, Kodak WAS photography.

Kodak's webpage announcing their reorganization. This still seems a bit surreal, and almost like it's from the universe next door and not ours. I imagine that we'll know it's real when we can't get Kodak products anymore. I dread that day.

A lot of us photographers have been watching Kodak’s slow demise for quite some time now, and are not all that surprised that it has come down to this Chapter 11 status. It’s not a happy or unexpected realization by any means, but we still hope that Kodak will rise out of the ashes. If I were a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, I’d look into the section below titled “Did Kodak make the nails for their own coffin?” I’m sure that there are many nuances to this story that the public is not privy too, but us professional photographers have been  bearing witness to a few decades worth of missteps that more than likely had something to do with their downfall.

Just last week I was shooting Kodak Tri-X black & white film with a wide-field camera. Not for nostalgia's sake, but because I needed some cool cityscape photos in black & white.

Abridged Kodak Story

In order to understand the above webpage describing Kodak’s exit out of dedicated capture devices, you really need to understand who they were and examine the core of their essence, so here goes, please bear with me. This story could actually be published in book length, but since this is a blog, here is the McNeil condensed version (part of this blog entry was plucked out of my lecture notes from when I taught a History of Photography course).

In the early 1870’s, photographers couldn’t even buy pre-made negatives, film did not exist. This is a special area of research for me, as I have a collection of glass plate negatives that marks the time at the cusp between when photographers had to make the collodion hand coated negatives and when they were able to simply purchase ready-made dry plate negatives. Photographers had to hand-coat their own glass plates (which was closer to alchemy than science) and essentially made their own negatives.

Large format hand coated wet plate collodion negative that predated the manufacture of film. Negative by Felix Bonfils at the ruins of Capernaum, from the McNeil collection. You can easily see where the photographer was carefully painting the negative with a black opaque material to render a white sky, because the collodion wasn't capable of a proper exposure of the sky while photographing a landscape. The wet plate collodion negative was only sensitive to blue light.

I learned many of the nuances of glass plate negatives from a scholar at the George Eastman House by the way (she spent the afternoon carefully examining my 1870’s & 1880 glass plate negatives made by the famous Felix Bonfils). The concept of being able to buy photographic film hardly existed prior to Kodak’s arrival. There were a number of international companies that made dry plate negatives, but it was Kodak who transformed it into an amateur phenomenon, which created millions of new photographers. It means that more than any other company, Kodak transformed photography  into a common practice for nearly anyone to use, and they did it on a global scale.

When I think of Kodak, I think of the entire culture of photography since the late 1800’s, and especially how they’ve dominated nearly every phase of the culture and industry of photography for so long, most notably during the entire 20th century. In this sense, Kodak is nearly a quintessential or archetypal model of American industry. Kodak obviously didn’t invent photography, but rather stepped in nearly 50 years later to make photography easily available to the world for the first time.

Kodak round photo from the first Kodak camera, dated late 1800's, from the first generation of cameras that used roll film. Library of Congress, number 3g04797u. This is an uncropped download that shows a visual aesthetic with the first Kodak snapshots (the photo is a bit askew, but this is the way it was presented from the archive). Kodak learned early that women were primary consumers of their products, partly because women made most of the family snapshots, and partly just because they were damn good photographers. Therefore, Kodak aimed much of their advertising and corporate strategies towards women.

A quirky bit of history has the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin teaching bible studies with lantern slides in the mid-1880’s. He was looking for a way to make this easier, and discovered that he could transfer the texts onto a type of flexible film called nitrocellulose and filed a patent for it in 1887, two years before Kodak’s patent for nearly the same thing. Goodwin contended that the patent was rightfully his, and sold it to the Ansco company, which sued Kodak for it and won a five million dollar judgement years later, in March of 1914. This little scenario had to do with the invention of roll film, which essentially acted as a literal basis for photography for over 100 years, plus made motion picture film possible.

Kodak mass produced film to create the revolution in photography that made it available to nearly anyone. The key phrase here is mass availability, ease of use and affordable prices. Roll film is what made this happen, and it is likely the number one technological advance that moved photography into popular culture.

A scholar could make the assertion that George Eastman was a visionary, and his powerful personality had everything to do with Kodak’s success as a large corporation. This is a critical stance, because I’ll also make the claim that without a visionary leader at the top, a company can flounder, and when important aspects of a company are left to committees to determine, things can go drastically wrong. Eastman died in 1932.

Eastman was an astute business person, and could be compared to the Bill Gates of his day in that instead prioritizing camera production, he set Kodak’s priority on the manufacture of film. It’s kind of what Bill Gates and Microsoft did with computers regarding selling the operating system, and let others fight it out with building the computers. It meant that Kodak became the de facto near-monopoly for the sale of film, and in fact held many of the roll film patents.

Throughout the entire 20th century, Kodak dominated the industry and culture of photography. It became clear in the 1940’s that other countries could manufacture the high-end cameras more affordably and Kodak gave up that part of the industry. Up until then they made a number of professional level large format cameras and lenses, in addition to cameras such as the legendary Ektra and classic Kodak Bantam Special. It became clear that Japan could manufacture high quality cameras at more affordable prices, so Kodak gave up that segment of the camera market and prioritized affordable snapshot cameras that of course encouraged the use of high volumes of their film.

Kodak Bantam Special from 1936. In my opinion, this was the most beautiful camera ever designed. It is ultra-compact (around 3 inches wide), made of precision machined parts with an aluminum shell, was fast to operate and made high quality photographs on 828 sized film. It costed $110.00 new, which translates to $1,793.75 in 2012 dollars (according to the Consumer Price Index inflation calculator).

The Kodak Bantam Special was designed by the legendary designer Walter Teague. It had a lightning fast f/2 lens that allowed high quality photos to be made with the slower ISO Kodachrome film. This was a camera for the true photographic connoisseurs who only wanted the best of the best, which of course means that I use one, even today (B&H sells 828 film for this camera). The pre-war versions used the German Compur shutters; Kodak was starting to use German parts for some of their cameras.

By the mid-to late 1900’s it was clear that Kodak really didn’t have any real rivals with film manufacture, even as there were dozens of other excellent film producers. Kodak was relegated to the production of amateur cameras (millions of units per camera model), having given up on the manufacture of professional quality cameras in favor of amateur versions, where volume was the key to success. Not only that, but as mentioned earlier, the cameras were not the key income producer, it was the film that Kodak was targeting with their largest volume of sales. Kodak also had the near monopoly with professional quality films too, it’s where pros went to get the film that defined their livelihoods. Kodak spent millions of dollars on research and development to assure that they stayed on top as the company that had a reputation for making the best films in the world.

The Kodak Brownie was produced in many incarnations and is one of the all-time volume sellers for cameras in the world. They were made of cheap materials and easily mass produced to sell to the masses. Everyone was supposed to be able to afford one, even people in the lower classes who couldn’t afford luxuries; Eastman’s philosophy was to make photography available to everyone. Many photographer’s first cameras (including myself) were Kodak Brownies.

Kodak’s most legendary film was the Kodachrome slide film, which was only discontinued last year as a casualty of the digital photography revolution. Their other flagship film was black and white Tri-X film, which is still manufactured today (and is what I ask my own students to use in our black and white film class, by the way). By the mid-1970’s Kodak sold an astounding 90% of the film in America; nearly a monopoly. These were the good times, and darker events were to soon unfold.

The Center for Creative Imaging in Maine was "THE" place to learn digital photography back in the early 1990's. It's where I learned many aspects of digital photography; it was an awe-inspiring place to learn, because Kodak spared no expense in making it the state of the art facility in the world for digital photography.

Did Kodak make the nails for their own coffin?

1st Nail: Ektachrome & the advent of Fujifilm

To begin with, I’ll make the assertion that these seven Kodak missteps happened because there wasn’t a George Eastman or Steve Jobs type visionary leader at the top to cut through all the nonsense and simply see that things got done, period. No messing around or heads would roll. I’m betting that not only did heads not roll, but there wasn’t any one entity held responsible for this long list of failures. My bet is that it was the board of directors trying to do some very difficult tasks via committee and it simply did not work. Steve Jobs would have told you straight out that some things you simply do not vote on, and in order to make innovation a reality, you must have a very strong-willed, tenacious leader taking charge and seeing that bad things absolutely did not happen, at  least not on your watch.

So in a very real sense, not only did bad things happen, they also happened in slow motion over many decades, and by this January’s Chapter 11 filing, there was hardly anything anyone could do to stop the downward spiral.

In my opinion, one of the big Kodak missteps happened throughout the 1970’s. For some reason, Kodak did not apply a high level of quality control over their Ektachrome films. Many of the 35mm versions of Ektachrome were simply awful with obvious color shifts and had a tendency to fade fairly quickly.

One of the drawbacks with Kodachrome was that it took a long time to process, and pros wanted a film that could be processed quickly and without the highly specialized labs that Kodachrome required. Even though it was the best film ever made, Kodachrome took too long to process in this speeded up world. I can remember sending packets of film to the closest Kodachrome lab in Palo Alto via many of the new overnight shipping companies that were springing up at this time.

Ektachrome slide film was supposed to fill the need for fast, same day processing and it only required a more basic process called E-6 chemicals and processing equipment. From what I understand, it was also supposed to use less toxic chemicals than the Kodachrome compounds. At any rate,  many of the Ektachrome versions fell right on their faces as dismal failures. Professionals were beyond belief that Kodak would release a substandard film, and voted with their feet by simply not buying the film. In the meantime, a company named Fujifilm in Japan was working on producing a high quality transparency film that could use the easier and more affordable E-6 same-day processing that didn’t have to be shipped to a specialized lab.

Fujifilm stepped in during the early 1980's and filled the gaping void left by Kodak.

Fujifilm came forth with a beautifully rich film that had the high color saturation, superfine grain, and accuracy that came nearest to the best of what Kodachrome had to offer. Pros didn’t have to deal with the awful Ektachrome anymore and Fujifilm became a nearly instant bestseller and took over a large segment of the film market that Kodak had owned for decades. It should have served as a wake-up call to Kodak that they were vulnerable to outside companies taking over a market segment that Kodak thought was invincible. Fujifilm only got better, and during the decades of the 1980’s and 1990’s Fujifilm had the audacity to displace Kodak and their E-6 line of transparency films. Kodak’s response was too little, too late and Fujifilm’s sales skyrocketed.

2nd Nail: Disc film… hush, sweep it under the rug, quick

This is more minor, but worth mentioning. Kodak was experimenting with a new film format called Disc Film. Kodak was answering the call for even more compact cameras, and it needed a more compact film to make it work, which is why Disc cameras and film came on the scene. The photos were too grainy even under the best circumstances and it was eventually discontinued due to low sales. A number of other film companies also made disc film, but none of them really had any success with it. Disc film was notable however, because it reflected the consumer’s desire for more compact cameras that made good photos.

3rd Nail: The Polaroid debacle, oh no

In my opinion, Kodak made a mistake by using the Polaroid instant film technology without bothering to buy rights to their use. The courts agreed, and in 1986 Kodak had to discontinue the manufacture of their instant films because it was infringing upon Polaroid’s patents.  This was a significant third strike against Kodak in the 1980’s and photographers and consumers were starting to wonder if perhaps Kodak was losing an edge in the world of photography. Kodak was still a powerhouse though, and could have recovered easily from these setbacks, but a downward cascade was set in motion.

The digital repreive

The bright spot in the above was that Kodak was taking the lead with inventing digital technology that was to set the stage for the transition to digital photography. In this sense, Kodak was in fact playing the role of being a visionary company by imagining the future of photography. Kodak came forth with a flurry of inventions and new patents for digital photography, and also found themselves collaborating with a large number of new players in the emerging field of digital photography.

By the early 1990’s the desktop publishing revolution had taken off, and programs such as Photoshop quickly became industry leaders on the computer side of the equation, as did Apple computer for the desktop of choice for digital photographers. Kodak released their first consumer level digital cameras in the early 1990’s, but they were fairly expensive and the public still didn’t have the infrastructure to really use the digital photographs. It wasn’t until 1997 that Kodak was able to market a megapixel point and shoot digital camera for under $1,000.00, so digital photography for the general public still wasn’t a reality yet because they were too expensive for the average consumer (it was roughly $1,400.00 adjusted for inflation in 2012 dollars).

Kodak DC120 digital camera that was the $1,000.00 price buster in 1997. I know this camera well, because I purchased the model immediately previous to this one, but it was badged with the Chinon brand, the ES-3000.

In 1995 the ES-3000 was priced at $1,400.00, and since I was going to make digital photography my livelihood, I purchased one. It was large, awkward and generally clunky, but hey, it was digital! It made 1/3 of a megapixel photos and represented the first generation of digital cameras. As I recall, it sucked up a tremendous amount of battery power in just a few shots and you always had to carry a lot of extra batteries with you. It had a 38-115mm equivalent zoom lens and didn’t have an LCD screen.

Kodak also collaborated with companies such as Nikon to manufacture some of the first high-end digital cameras designed for professional use. Many of these cameras were hybrids between film camera bodies and digital components. Most were nearly twice as large as regular 35mm pro cameras and costed thousands of dollars, which put them out of the reach of average consumers. It meant that in the 1990’s, digital photography was still too expensive for the huge amateur market and film was still dominant.

This literally looked like someone took a Nikon film body and screwed on the Kodak digital components. It was 1.5 megabytes of pure digital power.

This was a curious time in Kodak’s life, because it was at the crossroads of two photographic technologies, film and digital. I suspect that it made for a number of fierce debates on their board, because on one hand they had their lucrative film products that was their mainstay for so long, and on the other, they had the newer digital technology to explore. I don’t know this for a fact, but suspect that there was an internal war where the digital group was a minority, and likely had to fight for every little bit of funding for their endeavors, and the film group was not convinced that the digital group deserved the funding it was requesting. At least this is what it looks like from the outside. I’d love it if someone were to do the research to learn how this inside conflict unfolded over the years up until just now, when Kodak had to declare Chapter 11 protection.

4th nail: Internal conflict of film vs digital technology

This is the murkiest part of Kodak’s downfall and is admittedly little more than pure speculation. It appears that there was an internal conflict going on with Kodak and they simply couldn’t agree on whether they were to be a film company or a digital company, so their decisions with both seem to have been compromised by each other, but who really knows? The board of directors knows, but I’m betting that none of them will ever admit as much. We only have clues to this assertion, and I’ll bring the Kodak DCS 14n forward as an example.

5th Nail: The abrupt shift to digital photography (oops)

Kodak was doing some very exciting things by the early 2000’s, including releasing a flurry of small point and shoot digital cameras that were very solid and just as good, if not better than their competitors.  All of a sudden, the market was flooded with tens, if not hundreds of digital cameras made by dozens of companies, including Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Minolta, Konica, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, Leica, Agfa, Casio, Sigma, and so on. The digital revolution was in full swing and consumers could buy a digital camera for less than a few hundred dollars. The years between 2000 and 2003 were little more than a blur regarding digital cameras because the market was flooded with them nearly overnight. All of a sudden, consumers were buying more digital cameras than film cameras and companies like Kodak were caught totally unprepared for the abrupt change from film to digital photography. Nobody thought that it would happen in the course of just a couple years and companies were unprepared for the dramatic hits their film divisions would take as consumers stopped buying film and film cameras.

On the professional end of the market, both Nikon and Canon were releasing some very high quality digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLR’s) that were starting to eliminate the need for film among pros too. Canon broke a price barrier with their Canon EOS 300D, which made high quality DSLR’s available to pros and serious amateurs for less than $1,000.00 with a kit lens. The higher-end DSLR’s were still overly expensive with many near the $10,000.00 price range.

6th Nail: The Kodak DCS 14n (the elephant in the corner)

The Kodak DCS 14n caused quite the stir among pros, because for the fist time (you can’t count Contax because they never released their version) a sensor the size of a 35mm frame of film was released. This has come to be known as a “full frame sensor” because most of the DSLR sensors are smaller than this (it also meant that lens focal lengths were accurate measurements again and did not have a factor to measure as with smaller sensors). Canon was set to release their version of a full frame sensor too, but it costed $8,000.00, three thousand dollars more than this Kodak 14n.

Critics called it a medium format camera because it had the unprecedented size of 14 megapixels, more than twice the size of most DSLR’s. It was a huge leap and even now, nearly a decade later it is still considered a large image sensor.

The Kodak 14n became “a nail in their coffin” because Kodak did not allocate the proper amount of research and development resources to make it successful. There were many very negative deficiencies that held the 14n back from being successful. It had excessive noise even at moderately low ISO settings, which meant that the camera was only useful in bright sunlight or with studio lights. This frustrated pros because they wanted to believe in Kodak and their high-end 14n camera; everyone desperately wanted this camera to be a success, an answer to their digital challenges. By this time, photographers were already used to high quality results from DSLR’s and Kodak was expected to easily surpass the quality of the smaller megapixel DSLR cameras.

By early 2003 it became clear to nearly everyone that the 14n was a failure. It caused a sensationalist stir in the online photography community, because by now there were a number of review sites where users could publicly share their conclusions about the camera and users were very vocal about the 14n’s shortcomings. Rants were common from users, as were photographers coming to Kodak’s defense. Kodak eventually quietly abandoned the camera, never publicly conceding defeat with it.

The 14n could be viewed as a key pivotal point with Kodak, because they had the potential to take a decisive lead with this camera, and it could have been a flagship digital camera that set the standard for future cameras from all manufacturers. The view from professional photographers was that it appeared that Kodak was not willing to do what it took to make this camera a success. This saddened many, and exasperated the ones who invested in the 14n camera bodies and lenses. It irked them that Kodak would give up on this camera that held so much positive potential, and a rift was made between professional photographers and Kodak, and many of them turned their backs on Kodak for good.

Canon and Nikon have stepped up to take the lead with DSLR’s, and Kodak is obviously not even a player anymore. This is where so many photographers like myself are disappointed, because Kodak was so close to taking the lead a decade ago with this 14n camera. In my opinion, this entire scenario helped set a precedent for how Kodak was to approach their digital photography initiatives.

7th nail: Overproduction of digital cameras and the iPhone camera

Another element of the digital photography scenario (that Kodak obviously can’t control) is that there is a glut of digital cameras being mass produced by nearly everyone. There are literally hundreds of models being released every year, all striving to become the most recent bestseller. Many of the models are nearly identical to each other and after a certain point there appears to be a clear lack of real innovation. Sure, there are lots of very cool models being made, and I just got a new one about a year ago that I like a lot. It appears that a few companies are distinguishing themselves quite nicely with models that are ultra-compact, yet go into manual override easily so that you can have a very precise control over the look of your photographs. Some even have a certain “coolness factor” that also jumps into the fray, just to make things more interesting.

This sea of digital cameras nearly became moot when Apple released their iPhone with a digital camera a few years ago. It’s first incarnation was low resolution and couldn’t focus or adjust the brightness levels. It was a low quality camera, a joke to real photographers. However, what it did have was an easy method to share its photos, either via Wifi or over the mobile service. It was ridiculously easy to share photos and it coincided perfectly with the social networking sites like Facebook. For the first time, way more photos were being shared online than being printed. I hear that people on Facebook are sharing 4 million photos per day. This means that people are crazy about the iPhone and other cell phone cameras.

Apple makes some of the coolest computers on the planet, but I've never been all that excited about their iPhone camera. I notice it still doesn't have any lens protection, which means that it's photos will be soft in no time, due to a scratched up lens.

Hardly any of the camera manufacturers picked up on this Wifi trend, even as photographers asked for connectivity. Camera manufacturers ignored these requests for Wifi with digital cameras, and as a result, the digital camera bestseller is the one with this feature, the iPhone. I think that even today, most manufacturers still don’t get it. Kodak was a player in this scenario and could’ve come forth with a bestseller if they responded, but this is just my opinion.

At any rate, digital camera sales are still not nearly as high as they could be because of the widespread use of the iPhone. Apple has become a digital camera bestseller, even with their low quality camera, because they led the trend with digital connectivity and ease of use. Any photographer can tell you that the most popular camera is always going to be the one you can just pull out in a few seconds, and today that is the iPhone. My advice still stands for Kodak and all the other camera companies; if you want to have a bestseller, make it with built-in Wifi that is easier to use than the iPhone combined with a higher quality camera. Easy as pie, what are you waiting for?

Conclusion: Can Kodak make a comeback?

All of the above is what I meant by a “slow motion downfall,” because it appears to have been a downward cascade over a number of decades that slowly  eroded Kodak until it is at the place it is today. As a professional photographer, I still do not want to give up on Kodak, even as it seems more likely that it will be cannibalized into a number of smaller entities.

I think that the irony in all of this is that at least a part of Kodak realized that the digital revolution was coming and it was critical to take the lead with it. The sad part appears to be that the leadership didn’t heed the findings of their own research teams.

I’m not sure what to think about Kodak’s disappearance from photography, except that it is not good. As of this spring 2012 semester we and many other universities still have a film component to our photography curriculums. Next week I am evaluating the Kodak Tri-X film from our students and a part of me is wondering how much longer it will be around. A long time I hope.

Here’s to you Kodak, and like I mentioned in the first paragraph, Kodak essentially defined my profession and for that I will always be sincerely grateful.

KODAK LIVES!

Story and photos Copyright Larry McNeil 2012, All rights reserved.

A lot of what photography is abut is simply noticing stuff. It’s driving by the railroad tracks and noticing a very quirky little steel structure that looks precisely like an outhouse of the apocalypse. I could only imagine some guy who was quite handy with steel plate fabrication thinking about possible scenarios for 2012. Danged if he was going to have to take a dump out in the woods, he was going to have an outhouse that would still be standing when the rest of civilization was smoking ruins.

I’d been grounded from driving for months (for medical reasons, nothing handed down by a judge) and my teenage son was my driver all summer and I’d noticed this on our forays around town. We were always  too busy to stop, but one day as we were going by I noticed that the light was hitting it in a very cool manner and asked him to turn around and go back to it. He parked and I walked over to shoot a series of photos with my little iPhone, since I wasn’t carrying any real cameras that particular day.

Shit house of the apocalypse.

Since I’m a photographer, I have a heightened sense of light and sometimes stop to photograph something just because the light was looking cool. I never take things at face value when it comes to photographic composition either, so I walked completely around the outhouse, paying keen attention to how it looked so differently, depending on the angles of the light hitting it. I liked the shadow side that also had a warm glowing reflection, as well as the highlight side where you could clearly see people’s handprints on the new metal.

This just seemed like a bizarre manifestation of the 2012 apocalypse stuff flying around, so of course it meant I had to stop and do a visual investigation. Anyway if anything bad hits this December, at least I know there will be a safe place to go to the bathroom.

Story & Photography Copyright Larry McNeil, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

Tee Harbor Jackson interviews Larry McNeil about the Lunacy of the Climate Crisis with his Arts and Humanities Fellowship

From the photo-collage "Winter in Juneau," regarding Global Climate Change. Larry is looking through an ice lens.

Part One, The Creative Process and Global Climate Change

THJ: I see that you’re busy in the midst of making new work, congratulations; you must feel pretty good about it.

LM: (laughs) Don’t congratulate me yet, there are less than eight of them so far. I’m still never sure how the public is going to respond to the work, but I guess we’ll see soon enough with an upcoming exhibition in a couple of weeks in California.

THJ: What exactly are you doing with your new work? Is it a continuation of your Fly by Night Mythology series?

LM: No, it’s about Global Climate Change. I just received an Arts and Humanities Fellowship from Boise State University, where I take the year off from teaching to dedicate to a new body of work. I think the advantage of this new work is that nearly everyone on the planet is aware of the subject, because it has already affected her or him in some manner. I can’t seem to get it out of my head. Some days it makes me either angry, a bit depressed or incredulous at how remarkably stupid we humans can be, especially here and now at the start of the 21^st Century on planet Earth. If a subject is stirring up that many emotions and thoughts, one should definitely make work about it.

THJ: What can you share with us about what you’ve learned so far?

LM: I traveled to quite a few coal fired power plants earlier this summer and realized that it is one thing to read about them, but quite another to be right there with them in all of their immensity. On a very critical level, the problem of coal powered power plants is a simple issue of money. As long as there are billions of dollars to be made from burning coal, it will continue. A simple clarity doesn’t mean solving the problem will be easy however, it just means it is easy to comprehend. It’s kind of like saying if you want to build a pyramid you just have to get millions of truck-sized bricks and place them according to your engineer. It’s a simple concept, but an overwhelming task. It’s the same here; it will be nearly impossible to get an entire industry to give up their multi-billion dollar cash cow (actually it’s more likely a multi-trillion dollar, Euro or Yen industry internationally), which unfortunately, is the burning of coal to make electricity. Easy to say, but nearly impossible to accomplish.

Yei ayaguxdatée, It Will be Stormy

I started this work with only a broad idea of how I wanted it to look, but knew I wanted a white raven to start things off. He is a signifier for being rebellious against corrupt aristocrats. I think that in order to climb out of this global climate melt-down, we have to rebel against the status quo, especially against wealthy industrialists who pollute our Earth with impunity.

THJ: So tell me about the look of these new photographs. Why the gas masks?

LM: It was definitely a visceral response to the coal fired power plants. When I got home from photographing the coal fired plants, I had a nasal irritation that turned into a nasty infection. When I was walking around them, the air definitely felt acidic, like you were breathing something that stung your nasal passages. I was in the thick of it for nearly ten days and like I mentioned, it started irritating my nasal passages. After a week, it was a gross infection and my doctor prescribed a topical antibacterial for my nasal passages. While photographing the coal fired plants I literally wished I had a gas mask and was dreading breathing the air in their vicinity. It was nasty and I felt bad for the people who have to work around them or live nearby. I especially felt bad for the people, plants and animals that had to live on the same planet where hundreds of millions of tons of coal waste go up in the air every year. Very bad indeed, and that is no joke.

"...It will be Stormy" detail. Global Climate Change.

THJ: What can we do if the electricity industry has no incentive to stop burning coal?

LM: To tell the truth, I’m not sure. Becoming informed about how truly nasty it is may be the first step. There are links all over the internet regarding the Climate Crisis, including http://www.climatecrisis.net/ and our own Environmental Protection agency at http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ The irony with the federal EPA is that in reality, they’re just as helpless as the rest of us when it comes to protecting the environment from the harm of these coal fired plants. Unfortunately, that is not a cynical opinion, but rather a stark, hot reality. I think that in order to really solve the problem, we simply stop using the electricity from the coal fired plants and stop the demand. We can’t do that though, because we need our electricity and there is no other viable alternative right now. Believe me, I think about it nearly every time I turn on my lights or watch a program on our big-screen television. So I acknowledge myself as being a part of the problem, because I’m buying the power derived from the burning of coal.

"...It will be Stormy" detail. Global Climate Change.

THJ: How does that make you feel?

LM: It’s one of those demented paradoxes. Here I am making work that has to do with informing what the issue is all about and yet I’m increasing its usage while doing it. It could drive you crazy, but I guess we have to start somewhere. Part of the reality is that burning coal is the easiest and cheapest route for us consumers to take right now. It would be very expensive to try and switch to wind and solar energy right now for our house. If I could make the switch right this moment and pay the same utility bill, I certainly would make the switch. But we can’t, the infrastructure is obviously not there. When we built our house back in 2005, it was prohibitively expensive to install solar panels on our house. We have the ideal setup for it too, with near constant sunlight with a southern exposure in a desert. It’s truly stupid to burn coal when this ideal situation is right here, but we can’t afford to make the switch, especially in this economy. This is the insanity that nearly all of us face. In the meantime, we continue to pump ghastly amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere every day around the world. Wouldn’t it be ironic to knowingly kill ourselves in our own wastes? I think that the punk term Sewercide fits perfectly.

"...It will be Stormy" detail. Global Climate Change.

THJ: What about your actual work for the series? Can you tell us what you were thinking about as you started working on it?

LM: Starting new work is kind of like a first date when you’re single. You’re a bit nervous about saying the wrong thing and wonder if you stink, either literally or intellectually. In the end (or the beginning) you just have to get over it and dive in. Because I’ve been working on various projects over the years, certain practices kick in kind of automatically, like getting the creative process humming. For an example, it is generally a good practice to make work that stirs something passionate deep inside you; I believe it’s at the core of the creative process. You should always make work about the passions you have and not ignore them. This is one of my key challenges as an art professor too by the way; that is, to help students get in touch with what is relevant in their lives. It’s always very rewarding to see that proverbial light bulb go on and have them discover the possibilities and potential of their own work.

THJ: Can you talk about the creative process and how you get started with new work? That seems to be a common challenge with artists; how do you approach it?

LM: It seems that at some point, you’re clear about the core idea, like I was with Global Climate Change. It’s not always like that though; sometimes it’s more nebulous, enshrouded in fog, but you know instinctively that there is something good in there to pursue. Sometimes it’s a mix of both. It seems to me that the creative process can be a slippery state of being that sometimes seems to be part subterfuge, part conscious strategy, and part intuitive act, all mixed together to figure out as you go along. As for myself, I get the feeling that part of it comes directly from my personality without much filtering, and yet other parts seem to be gifts from the creator; pure happenstance that I can’t really claim. I suspect that the creative process favors those whom constantly push it, but who knows? It’s that slippery aspect that remains a mystery, which I suppose is likely a good thing, because if we had all the answers, it would likely be a bit predictable and bland, so here is to the creative process (raises coffee mug).

THJ: Can you be more specific? What about advice for young artists trying to figure it out?

LM: I think an essential part of the creative process simply involves rolling up one’s sleeves and getting busy. In my opinion, the magic of the creative process simply lies in the act of doing. It is fairly common knowledge that the brain gets very adept at whatever it does the most. I would put forth the assertion that if you spend enough time learning something and perfecting it, you not only get accomplished at it, but you may also start doing something entirely new and unique that may be altogether your own, especially with a sense of style or visual aesthetic. Lots of artists start to make their own visual vernacular, which is when art becomes very interesting.

THJ: Can you give me an example with your own work?

LM: Maybe. I’ve been working with photography for about thirty years and when I envision a project, sometimes I have a general idea of what I want to say with the work, and how it may look, but the nitty-gritty essence of it only unfolds as I actually do the work. This means that the essence of the art happens more as a journey where one sometimes charts a general course, but a substantial part of it has to do with discovery and being open to what you find along the way. Maybe it means having the ability to notice things that other people don’t pay much attention to and emphasizing it with your work in some manner, but who knows?

This is snapshot of me working on the new print made in January at the Te Tihi artist's gathering in Rotorua, New Zealand, sponsored by Toi Maori Aotearoa. I started the print there, but couldn't finish it because I hadn't made the journey to various coal fired power plants yet. The only part not completed was the power plant, which was a critical component of the print, so the middle was blank for a number of months.

"X’áant xwaanúk Tléil yee ushk’, I'm angry you are bad."

THJ: Can you tell us why the above print looks the way it does?

LM: The new print “X’áant xwaanúk Tléil yee ushk’, I’m angry You are bad” is about Global Climate Change and has a foreboding looking set of smokestacks at the center of the print. Nearly every country in the world has these nasty coal fired power plants spewing their carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, which is what makes them universal. Ravens also appear on nearly every continent (except Antarctica, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were there too), but only our own Northwest Coast people have the legend of a white raven, so far as I know. It’s meant to be kind of satirical with the white raven looking into the empty head of a human wearing a gas mask. To me, this print feels like an old crumbling wall with ancient tribal crests and designs in the background, among other things. The white raven has to do with overcoming evil and being transformed from white to black along the way. It was vital to have the coal fired plant in there, because it is the international problem that hopefully will not be our undoing.

THJ: Does this mean that your work is targeted towards an international audience?

LM: Yes, definitely. One of my very conscious strategies with this work was to make art that has a broad audience, because the work is ultimately about humanity and not any one group. For an example, some of the key layers of meaning with the above print are for all of humanity, not one narrow demographic. We’re all faced with the nastiness of coal fired power plants.

The other element that helps to make the new work universal is my use of photography. In my opinion, photography helps to break down artificial barriers between cultures just because every culture knows what photography is and how to easily navigate it. You could say the same thing about other media too, including painting, sculpture, literature, video and music, which is the value of what the humanities have to offer.

I was looking for a dark, gritty feel with a bit of trepidation and subtle unease on the side. Some ravens are naturally regal and project a real air of aloofness, seemingly above us mere mortals.  I hardly ever have to look very hard for them, it’s the look they project when I’m around.

THJ: What about your specific cultural identity as a Tlingit and Nisgaá person? Doesn’t that influence the content and visual aesthetics of your work?

LM: By all means; this is the part of the discussion where our life’s experiences and historical background enters the fray. One’s interpretation about the meaning(s) of life, if you will. In my opinion, one of the basic truisms with humanity is that you can’t escape the culture in which you were raised; it will always be a part of your character. This is true regardless of whichever culture you are from in the world. I once had an audience member at a museum comment that she wished she had a culture to draw from for her work. I laughed at the silliness of the comment, but assured her that her culture from middle America was just as teeming and vibrant as any other in the world, all it took was acknowledging that it exists and that it has its own quirks, strengths and distinctiveness. By the way, I’m also a fully entrenched member of middle America with all strings attached, especially as a University Professor who helps teach young students how to become better humans via the educational system.

You can try and run away from your background, but it’s like trying to shake the DNA out of your body. In the end, this effort will only make you dizzy, annoyed and maybe indignant, so why deny it? If you’re in touch with the content of your art, you’re generally tapping into your life’s experiences and using them as momentum for your work; it is who you are and it is a rarefied strength to be nurtured and tended to, so that perhaps a bit of wisdom may become an element of what one is producing. I’m pretty sure this is right.

I love how everything kind of blends in together on this thrashed out wall, from our ancient Chilkat designs, to the filthy coal power plant, to the basket designs of Kéet, or Killer Whale teeth.

THJ: How does this apply to artists from other cultures trying to succeed in the world?

LM: I think it just means that you need to be true to yourself and use your natural strengths, experiences and ways of interpreting them, regardless of your demographic background. The key here is the act of interpretation with your work; this is what makes you unique in the universe and you can’t hold back. If you hold back, I think that mediocrity may sneak into the fray. At its best, this becomes a journey of discovery for both yourself and the viewer, where we have the opportunity to learn new things, which is perhaps what humanity is all about; that we do have the ability to better ourselves, whatever that means. This sensibility is essentially what I bring to the art academy as a scholar and artist for young artists.

THJ: I have a lot of questions about your other work too, including a discussion about photography, but it appears we’re out of time.

LM: I’d like to add that this body of work is having its inaugural showing at the C.N. Gorman Museum at UC Davis, where my nephew Da-ka-xeen Mehner and I are having a two person exhibition. Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Director of the Museum) and Veronica Passalacqua (Curator) have graciously invited us to exhibit together, Gunalshéesh, thank you.

Arts & Humanities Fellowship sponsored by Boise State University

Exhibition sponsored by C.N. Gorman Museum from September 28 – December 5, 2010

With additional funding from the Evergreen Longhouse via their National Native Creative Development Grant

Part Two: Photography, How Process informs Meaning

All images are Copyright Larry McNeil, 2010, All Rights Reserved. You must have permission of the artist in order to reproduce any of them.

This year I earned a Boise State University Arts and Humanities Fellowship from our enlightened school. Thank you so much, I have a heartfelt gratitude for being granted the year away from teaching to make art. My Fellowship project is about Global Climate Change, as viewed from the Humanities. After a few months of concentrated research on the subject, it’s become ever clearer that a large part of humanity is either in various degrees of denial about climate change, or are cashing in on the things that are bad for the environment at an accelerated pace, which of course is quite insane. But one example are all the new coal fired power plants that America and other countries have been building over the past year, knowing full well the overwhelming negative ramifications of their actions.

The above has also made it clear that this Fellowship is likely going to be significantly more controversial than I’d originally envisioned it. The reality of global climate change seemed to be very plain and uncomplicated, but the cover-up actions of wealthy industrialists has made this stance murky and seemingly questionable. More on this later, but the effect on my work has been to make it more direct and hopefully, enlightening for the viewers.

I’ve been very busy with doing the travel, photography, editing and all of the other creative challenges linked to the Fellowship . For the first time in over a month I have an opportunity to come up for air as they say, and reflect on the work for a moment. This is a critical part of the creative process, because it allows me time to stop and absorb what’s going on with the work, let it soak in and make any changes with how it looks, what it’s saying, and the ever crucial next step.

Ravens have been a part of my visual vocabulary for a long time and I thought I’d lock him out of this work. I find it to be a bit perplexing how I made a conscious creative decision and raven snuck back in, nearly all by himself. Perhaps it is the intuitive part trumping conscious decisions. Blackbirds. They’re everywhere.

Anyway, just one of the prints has a blackbird for now. I call it the leveraging piece that set me free for all the others. It had some of the visual aesthetics I was looking for, including a gritty feel in black and white that I really like for part of the project. I like the reality of grit and the metaphor of black and white, whatever that means. I’m still figuring it out, but keep going back to it.

Desktop sneak preview of new Fellowship work. That sly raven is everywhere; this is a small part of the larger print.

Part of the dialogue has to do with the traditional role that raven has played as a transformer or changeling, and the reality that human beings play the role of transformers quite well too. After all, there is no other animal that has transformed our home planet as much as humans, at least in recent memory. My work retains its focus on changelings, only there is an obvious shift to the two-legged variety.

One of my favorite creative devices is this simple little pocket journal. It’s small enough to just fit in my pocket and as I think of ideas, they go into the notebook. It’s not really a journal, but is literally a finely crafted miniature version, made of splendid Italian leather with heavy archival paper. When one is in the midst of an ongoing project, ideas come in unpredictably sometimes, and it’s good to try and capture them before they fly off to wherever they came from. So in a way, this is my own version of a dreamcatcher. I am also in love with words and wanted a worthy place for them to gather strength prior to powering up my art, if that makes any sense.

This is a miniature version of a finely crafted, handmade journal that I use as a part of my creative process.

I keep thinking about the juxtaposition of human responses to various experiences and why they are either visceral or intellectual. For an example, this morning a friend posted a photo of a large centipede and I related a story of how I instinctively and instantly killed one that was running under our baby’s crib. You can’t get much more visceral than that, especially to an overt threat. In my opinion, we humans are lax with our response to the carbon dioxide emissions that are a key cause for global climate change because we simply can’t see it. It’s invisible, so we don’t have the fast and instinctive response to it as we may have if it were visible. Anyway, this is simply a theory that is already finding a visual manifestation in the Fellowship work.

I’ll post more entries as I progress, including some about process, because it has been accentuated with the work. Some artists just gloss over this aspect, but I find it compelling because process is such an essential element of my visual strategies, and is why the work looks like it does. In the meantime, it’s off to make a pot of sumptuous morning coffee. Pull up a chair and give me your mug, it’s pretty good.

If you were a musician and knew this was your last performance, what would you play? Would you make it your most magnificent and heartfelt gig, one for the ages? Or if you were an author writing your last page? Would you make your words blend with the stars up above, leaving your readers a bit stupefied with the poetic mystery of what they just experienced?

As a photographer, I feel a bit like those guys because so many of our usual photographic supplies and tools are being zapped from existence, casualties of the digital insurrection. Including the reality that Kodak discontinued the ever-venerable Kodachrome in 2009. Part of me wants to rally the troops and blast those punks back to last week, leaving the future of photography to us photographers, thank you. Then I realized that I’ve been teaching digital photography since the mid-90’s and helped lead the way with establishing digital photography as an accepted art form when galleries were still rejecting it as a crass pretender. The enemy turned out to be myself. Homer said it best: Doh. If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny,  a real contender for a Greek tragedy, replete with a self-made paradox. In the end I guess I’d have to agree with Steve McCurry, the famous National Geographic photographer (who’s shot thousands of rolls of Kodachrome over the decades) who said change is good.

Ok, so change is good; get a roll and shoot it anyway, just because.

This leaves two obvious choices. Number one, we can find a quiet place in the forest and ponder its glory and perhaps even heave a heavy sigh or two; maybe even say dang to the heavens, just in case anyone is listening. A hearty glass of fine tequila would be good to accompany this foray. Or even better, get yourself at least one roll of Kodachrome and shoot something fun and maybe even memorable, kind of like what McCurry is doing. Just make sure you get it processed at Dwayne’s in Kansas, by December.

50 Reviews. Except for an uppity one. What?

My nephew Da-ka-xeen Mehner and I are having an exhibition opening in late September at the C.N. Gorman Museum at UC Davis. We’re both shooting Kodachrome in conjunction with our regular work in homage to the film. Kodachrome has above average contrast, extreme fine grain, excellent color accuracy and saturation. Not to mention the most archivally durable film ever made. It’s one of those rare films that is good at nearly everything, from great skin tones to the widest variety of landscapes.

Last August, B&H sent me an email requesting a review of my recent Kodachrome purchase and I happily complied. For some reason, they didn’t use it. Dang.

B&H Photo didn't use my review for some reason. What gives? I thought it was quite accurate.