What Will Become Of The 'Kodak Moment'?

Readers of this page know me as a baby boomer who prefers to describe her age in anecdotal terms, rather than getting too specific about the numbers. Suffice it to say that I had given up afternoon naps by the time Kennedy was assassinated. Not long after that (though it seemed like eons from my childish perspective), I had a Kodak moment when I attended the 1964 World’s Fair in my hometown, New York City.

Eastman Kodak Company‘s pavilion there was a white, undulating, wildly futuristic structure that looked like something out of Dr. Seuss but was actually designed by Will Burtin. Part of the rooftop garden simulated the terrain of the moon’s surface (five years before the first men walked on it).

I had little use for the exhibits there are about taking pictures — it was a number of more birthdays until I got my first camera. But when I did it was a Kodak Instamatic. That word has become so antiquated that Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the voice recognition software that I use to write, entered “in systematic” instead, and until I capitalized the word my computer flagged “instamatic” as a spelling error.

For a child, this camera might as well have been called “instant magic,” which is what Dragon entered the second time I said the word. It was the ultimate point-and-shoot. There was no need to focus or even learn to load film. The kodachrome came preloaded on a sealed cartridge that you simply dropped into the camera and wound (it stopped automatically when you reached the right point). You never actually saw the film.

But my favorite part was the flash cube that you snapped onto the top of the camera when you needed more light. It contained four tiny bulbs — one on each side — and rotated as you wound the camera after taking a picture. I loved the look of those exploded bulbs as they seemed to ooze their molten contents. How environmentally unfriendly! I imagine mounds of them lurking in landfills.

The phrase “Kodak moment” has been in use for more than 50 years, company research indicates. Among the early print-ad headlines was “This Kodak moment can’t wait for Dad to get home,” which didn’t really speak to me since I had two working parents. After the tag line was reintroduced in the 1990s and trademarked in 1992, “Kodak moment” became part of the popular lexicon.

When I became a mother in 1997, I saw Kodak moments everywhere. I have two large file boxes of print pictures recording every gesture and every milestone from the first 24 months of my son’s life, arranged chronologically (with index tabs). I sometimes wonder if the house was in flames whether I’d have time to grab them from the closet before I dashed up the fire ladder to the roof. Now of course my husband and I can take pictures with our iPhones. Note to file: Put them in Dropbox.

All of our lives are filled with Kodak moments. When she died my grandmother left behind more snapshots than any other single possession. I hadn’t realized that she was not only the family matriarch — she was also the family archivist.

Some were poorly exposed, blurry photos of people who we couldn’t identify in locations we didn’t recognize. But others are cherished keepsakes. The experience of going through these photos provided me with significant comfort and inspired the cover of my book, Estate Planning Smarts.

I asked Laura Zavetz, who designed the book, to come up with a cover that graphically conveys a life well lived, even as the text deals with the subject of mortality. Our concept for the cover was to replicate the experience of opening a drawer after someone has died and having pictures spill out. Friends and family helped by emptying their shoeboxes of pictures and sharing their own Kodak moments.

The term “Kodak moment” has earned a spot in The Online Slang Dictionary, which defines it as “a moment worthy of capturing with a photograph, especially an adorable moment.” But will it lose its place there now that Eastman Kodak has filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code?