From June 14 to August 22, the YellowKorner galleries exhibit a series of impressively sized advertising photographs.
The origins of the collection go back to giant backlit images made by Kodak and displayed in the main hall of the Grand Central Station in New York. At the time, the company boasted that the sky was the limit in photographic innovation. Used from 1950 to 1990 as ads in the legendary Manhattan train station, the posted photographs were transparencies of exceptional dimensions: 60 feet wide by 20 feet tall. This scale had never been attempted in the world of photography. Thanks to their spectacular, nearly surrealist mises-en-scène, these panoramic images became tools of communication in the service of promoting Kodak-brand films and cameras.
A thrue serial , the Kodak Colorama Display staged, over the course of 40 years, the story of an ideal family, with no strife or struggle, in other words, an expression of the postwar American dream, its most homey and universally acceptable facet. The images from the Colorama collection were used above all for the purpose of promoting Kodak products foregrounded in each tableau. These panoramas allude to classic themes such as the passage of time in order to highlight the function of the camera, which captures and preserves the best moments in life, be they birthdays, family reunions, weddings, or holidays.
Through their aesthetics and their ambition, these monumental prints go, however, beyond simple advertising and technological prowess. They also tell the story of an ideal family and thereby produce a discourse that is deliberately patriotic and conservative in 1950s America. This promotion of the “American way of life” sidelines counterculture, showing instead an existence that appears to be pure, bathed in bright colors, attested by smiles frozen on the lips of perky characters.
Colorama
June 14 to August 22, 2018
All YellowKorner galleries in France
Numbered limited editions on sale on the website.
