Coloramas

Billed as “The World's Largest Photographs,” Eastman Kodak's 18-by-60-foot Coloramas brought photography to the masses with a spectacular display of communicative power. During its 40-year run in Grand Central Terminal in New York City, the Colorama program presented a panoramic photo album of American scenes, lifestyles and achievements from the second half of the twentieth century. Produced in association with the George Eastman House Collection, Colorama explores the history of these colossal images. A selection of the most striking images are beautifully reproduced, making these images available to viewers nostalgic for American life in decades gone by, as well as people with a personal connection to the original display in Grand Central Station.

"All told there were 565 Coloramas: CinemaScopic landscapes crowded with camera-toting vacationers; middle-class families at play in very long living rooms; attractive couples gamboling through endlessly horizontal flower beds--this was the idealized, middle-class wholesomeness of a million hokey ads, familiar but now on a scale previously reserved for conquest and Jesus. Even as reproduced on these pages, at 1/99th its original size, Colorama's scope is evident." -- Bruce Handy -- Vanity Fair

"Billed as 'The World's Largest Photographs", Eastman Kodak's 18-by-60-foot Coloramas brought photography to the masses with a spectacular display of communicative power. The message of national well-being and wholesomeness presented in the Coloramas - with images by some of the most notable photographers of the time - was seen by half a million people per day until the 1994 renovation of Grand Central ended the program." --HotShoe International

"...a fascinating insight into all-American imagery - baseball games, swimming the creek, partying teens - with, naturally, someone on hand to capture the moment with a Kodak product." --Wallpaper

"In Colorama: a Collection of the World's Largest Photographs the moms are coiffed and minty-fresh; the men are preppy alpha males in plimsolls and trim pullovers. It's a gathering of perfect Kodak kitsch." -- Alastair Sooke --Daily Telegraph