Last Updated on 07/16/2014 by Chris Gampat
Image by Dan Zvereff. Used in our previous interview with him.
For all the lovers of the analog world out there, you should know that a recent Change.org petition to revive one of the greatest films that the world has seen: Kodak Aerochrome. Shooting Film first caught wind of the story and states that UK based Jasmin G is calling on Kodak Alaris and the Lomography company to revive the film. Lomography tried to do a variant called Lomochrome Purple, but it totally isn’t the same thing. While Lomochrome puts an emphasis on purple colors, Aerochrome put it on a pinkish purplish red.
How do they do this? For starters, Aerochrome was an infrared film originally developed for surveillance reasons. Years ago, the US would fly planes over the Congo and other regions with dense vegetation to find guerilla troops. When developed, the film would render the greens into a color like what you see in the image above that leads this story. However, later on the commercial world started to use it for art projects. Dan Zvereff and Richard Mosse are two famous photographers that come to mind at first. We have a full introduction to the film at this link–which also explains how it works.
The petition even goes on to explain that they commend the Lomography company in their effort to create an alternative to Aerochrome; but they acknowledge that it isn’t a replacement. It may not be enough though since Kodak has worked on restructuring over time.
While we commend Jasmin on the efforts to try to bring it back to life, we’re not sure that the little over 800 signatures that they’re asking for will be enough. And despite this, Lomochrome Purple is still doing quite well. What we thought would be a limited run film is still being made and pre-orders and orders are still going out. In fact, the Lomography store here in NYC tells us that they’re going to start selling the film in the store itself and not just online. That’s a surefire sign that it’s alive and well–just under a lot of close control and monitoring. Indeed, I’ve got three rolls in my fridge.
Let’s cross our fingers on this one.