Disappearance of Darkness by Robert Burley Is The Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

“Dwayne’s Photo Lab, Parsons, Kansas, December 30, 2010” is an image of the last facility in the world that processed Kodachrome film, taken three weeks before it ran its final batch. The image is by Robert Burley, from his new book called The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era, from which I culled a slide show for yesterday’s Daily Beast. What interests me most about the demise of Kodak films and their like is that they often relied on large-scale industrial processes to exist at all, so probably can never be revived by hobbyists. I wonder if there’s any other major technology that’s disappeared as thoroughly, irretrievably from our repertoire.

For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.