Kodak Humor

Christian Sandström holds a PhD from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. He writes and speaks about disruptive innovation and technological change.

(The following images come from Kodak’s abandoned site in Järfälla, outside of Stockholm, Sweden)

Kodak’s former film processing lab outside of Stockholm has been subject to a lot of vandalism since the early 2000s.

Back in the 1990s Kodak had to figure out some way to handle the coming revolution…

… One idea was to launch ‘hybrid’ products – which were a mix between digital imaging and film photography.

Kodak made its profits on film, and if digital imaging could be used to expand the film business, it would

present a great opportunity.

The Kodak Advantix film was essentially one of those attempts at hybrid products.

But once the digital revolution came into motion, sales decreased rapidly.

Advantix was withdrawn from the market in 2004. A huge development project had resulted in moderate sales.

At a meeting in the early 1990s, a Kodak executive named Terry Faulkner was the only

one opposing the Advantix project.

He thought it would be wiser to invest this money in digital imaging.

Right or wrong – we’ll never know.

But it’s striking how quickly hybrid products died once digital imaging started to prosper in the early 2000s.

When buildings started to be demolished in Kodak park (Rochester), Faulkner watched one of these events and

documented it with his (digital) camera.

The following images feature the destruction of Kodak’s building 69, which was the main home of the Photographic

Technology Division. This division was one of the major champions of Advantix inside Kodak.

Faulkner scanned a piece of Advantix film, and combined it with his images of the collapsing

building 69 using Photoshop.

Quite a remarkable and funny illustration of the problems Kodak has encountered:

Quite a Kodak Moment.

Thanks to:

Terry Faulkner

Find out more about Kodak:

www.christiansandstrom.org