In my (messy) archives, I found a box containing Kodachrome slides from November 2008. I think this was the last roll of Kodachrome that I ever exposed.
Kodak discontinued production of the film in 2009. Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, ran the very last processing anywhere on January 18, 2011. It marked the end of a 75-year era of the famous Kodachrome, a color film that defined and characterized color photography in the mid-20th century.
Here are some examples of this last roll of Kodachrome 64 (K64) from Vicksburg and Edwards, Mississippi. Click any picture to see more detail.
Vicksburg Stores
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| Former store, 1720 Military Avenue |
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| Closed store, 1326 Magnolia Street (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens) |
Church
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| Mount Calvary M B Church, East Avenue, Vicksburg |
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| Corner stone, Mount Calvary MB Church, East Avenue |
A recent street view on Google Maps shows that the church has been painted a light color. Note that in 2008, it still had diamond-shaped asbestos roof shingles.
Cottages
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| 2901 Cherry Street |
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| 1200 Harrison Street |
Vicksburg had so many of these little early-20th century cottages. One by one, they would be abandoned and, finally, condemned by the city inspector. The word, "Demo" on the Harrison cottage means the inspector has marked it for demolition. This is an example of deconstruction emptying out of American urban centers.
Speed Street School
This handsome brick school stood at the corner of Speed and Marshall Streets in Vicksburg. Built in 1894, it served as a school until 1940. In 1968, it was divided into low-rent apartments. Two former City employees told me that shootings, fights, drugs, and rapes were continuous trouble when it was used for low-cost housing. I explored inside after the tenants were expelled, and the apartments were horrifying. A Louisiana company demolished the building in 2008 and recycled bricks and timbers.
I took these pictures with my 20mm ƒ/5.6 Russar lens. It was a challenging lens to use well but provided an amazing wide view for settings like this. These are all tripod-mounted.
Edwards
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| Serious traditional Detroit iron |
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| Edsel sedan - yes, a bit weird |
A fellow on the north frontage road at the Edwards exit of Interstate 20 had a serious collection of old Detroit cars. Maybe I could have commissioned him to restore the Edsel for me. Well, maybe not.
I took these photographs on Kodachrome 64 film with my Leica M2 camera and various lenses. Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, developed the film in the last operating Kodak K-Lab processing machine. I scanned the slides with a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED film scanner using NikonScan 4.03 software running on Windows 7.
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| 20mm ƒ/5.6 Russar lens - superb optical performance |
This is a late, black version of the Russar lens. It has a M39 thread-mount, so to use it on a Leica M camera, you need a M-LTM adapter. Lomography reintroduced this lens around 2017.
