When you look at your family slides from the 1960s and 1970s, they have a particular look, with rich, deep colors and sharp, clean details. But the colors had subtlety, looking bright and vivid without being garish. It’s an instantly recognizable look that comes from the film that was used to shoot the images: Kodak Kodachrome. Paul Simon probably put it best:

Kodachrome

You give us those nice bright colors

You give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah!

Kodachrome was developed by two scientists working in the Kodak research lab early in the 20th century. Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes saw a color movie produced by the US Navy in 1916, and were not impressed with the color rendition. They decided to produce a film chemistry that would produce more accurate color, and the result was Kodachrome, which was first sold in 1917. However, with a hefty cost of $3.50 a roll (about $60 at todays prices), the film was a niche product.

Over time, Kodak improved the film and lowered the cost, and it was used to record significant events. The aftermath of the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 was captured by Gerry Sheedy (a staff photographer for the New York Mirror newspaper) using a compact camera with Kodachrome film, as shown in this spread from the Sunday Mirror Magazine from 1937. These are the only color photos of the disaster: other photos were shot on black and white film and colorized afterwards.

Color photos of the Hindenburg disaster, shot on Kodachrome film / Airships.net

Kodachome was used extensively through the great depression, World War II and the 1950s, although the slow speed of the film (an ISO rating of 12) meant that it was mostly restricted to posed shots taken in good light. Hollywood loved the rich colors, and Kodachrome was extensively used in publicity shots for starts like Marilyn Monroe. Shorpy has an excellent selection of shots taken using the large format version of the transparency film. The Library of Congress has an excellent online exhibition called Bound For Glory that shows Kodachrome shots of the great depression taken by the Farm Security Administration to document their work in the Midwest.

Faro and Doris Caudill, homesteaders, Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940/ Lee Russell, Library of Congress

Marilyn Monroe publicity shot for the film Dial M for Murder / Shorpy

Kodachrome became a mainstream film in the early 1960s, when Kodak refined the development process to make it cheaper (called the K12 process). They also launched a revised version called Kodachome II that was faster, with the 35mm film version for consumer cameras, boosting the ISO to 25. That was still much slower than other films, but the home photographers of the 1960s couldn’t get enough of the vivid colors and sharp detail of this film for their holiday photos.