Sears Roebuck de México, Pontiacs & Kodachrome
As a person who was born before the last century was half over (1942) I have seen a lot of what I took for granted disappear. Some of it was stuff and entities that seemed to part of my life.
I could name Oldsmobiles, Packards, Studebakers, Pontiacs, Saabs and the disappearance of virtually all 100% owned and built English cars.
As a photographer my world was that of the great yellow box of Kodak, of Agfa b+w photographic paper (particularly that very good Portriga) and exotic Contaxes.
Before the advent of digital I depended entirely in my career as a magazine photographer on the Polaroid Instant Film that fit in my Mamiya’s Polaroid back.
In Vancouver where I have lived since 1975 I only bought photographic products that could be repaired here. This is why I have always had Minolta flash meters and Nikons and Pentax cameras.
I used to define a big city (or at the very least a cosmopolitan one) as a city where you could have Kodachrome processed. In Vancouver Kodachrome processing could be had at the Kodak headquarters in West Vancouver.
That world, and Saturday postal delivery are no more.
Before my wife Rosemary and our two daughters left Mexico for Vancouver I would buy good shoes at Sears Roebuck de México. In fact I still have some very new looking brown brogues shoes from Sears that are made of the first synthetic leather called Corfam. Now the place where I personally took my two daughters (in Vancouver) to fit and buy their first bras is about to disappear.
The good-old-days are gone. I cling to my very good stereo system including a pair of largish JBL studio monitors and a Sony linear tracking turntable and I have yet to fall for Netflix.
And yet not all is bad. Not only is it not bad but some of it is even better. I shoot film and my Nikons, Pentaxes and Mamiya are my working horses. I also have and treasure my Fuji X-E1. My 13 year old Photoshop does short order fixings of my JPGS. I do not shoot RAW. My Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner is a delight in conjunction with my extensive files of negative, transparencies and photographs.
As a Prime example of how things are not only different but better my pièce de résistance is the photograph illustrating this essay. As I see it how could I have possibly shot it (I used film in the camera in this photo) without the advent of the digital camera?
If one studies the possibilities of things digital the parameters of imagination are just about endless. That is a good thing even though I can no longer buy shoes at Sears Roebuck de México.
Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.
