Eastman House exhibit documents the end of film

• What%3A The Disappearance of Darkness -- Photography at the End of the Analog Era
• When%3A Through Jan. 4
• Where%3A George Eastman House%2C 900 East Ave.
• For information%3A EastmanHouse.org

A seismic shift has occurred in the way we shoot photographs in the past decade.

That shift from film — made by big box film manufacturers Kodak, Agfa, Ilford and Polaroid — to digital photography is documented by Robert Burley through abandoned architectural landscapes at photo manufacturing plants in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Seen as products of a bygone era, the photographs are part of "The Disappearance of Darkness — Photography at the End of the Analog Era," on display through Jan. 4 at George Eastman House.

The earliest documentation is in 2005 at Eastman Kodak Canada's Kodak Heights Complex in Toronto when the Rochester-based company announced that the manufacturing plant was being decommissioned and demolished. When Burley — an architectural and landscape photographer and assistant professor at Toronto's Ryerson University — found out no one was documenting the closing, he asked if he could photograph the final days at the plant.

For a year and a half, Burley brought his large format film camera to the facility to shoot its semi-abandoned structures — monolithic in size and designed to produce light-sensitive materials in near total darkness.

"There was never anything else I wanted to do but to become a photographer, and I came of age when photography was emerging as an art form," Burley says. "I was working as an architectural photographer when I sensed that something was about to change in the field of photography."

Burley never planned on teaching but took a job at Ryerson University — which produced the traveling exhibit — in the late '90s, "because I wanted to be in a university setting as digital technology was finding its way into traditional photography — to be on the cutting edge of the change."

After documenting the end of Kodak Canada, Burley realized that the end of film manufacturing was becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

He expanded his project beyond Canada and discovered that several other giants in the film manufacturing industry were also on the verge of shutting down.

"By 2007, (most of) Agfa's central facility in Mortsel, Belgium, near Antwerp, had already closed. Agfa-Gevaert Company, originally Gevaert & Cie, was established in 1894. Kodak, Agfa and Ilford, these companies date back to the late 1800s. The loss of these (factories) elicited a sense of finality," Burley says.

Burley photographed Agfa's closing in Belgium in 2007, then came to Rochester several times from 2007 to 2011 to document closings and the demolitions at Kodak Park, including buildings 65 and 69.

"Some people don't realize that the first consumer camera was invented in Rochester in the late 19th century and that the first digital camera was invented here, too," Burley says.

Rochester Kodak scientist Steve Sasson invented the digital camera in 1975, and the company invented virtually every other digital photo technology as well.

Also included is a Kodak Pathé building in Chalon-sur-Saône, France — where the medium of photography was invented in 1827. In 2009, Burley shot Polaroid's headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2010 he shot an Ilford U.K. plant in Mobberley and that same year a Polaroid plant in Enschede, the Netherlands.

"Many of the scenes I witnessed were such final events," he says. "People went to see these demolitions. These were enormous buildings. The exception was the demolition of the plant in Chalon-sur-Saône where very few people showed up the day of the scheduled implosion."

The problem: The crew put 950 kilos of explosives at the base of the plant, set the charges and only 20 percent of the building fell. Months later, the building came down in a second attempt.

Lisa Hostetler, curator-in-charge of Eastman House's Department of Photography and coordinating curator for the exhibit, says she shares Burley's interest in the impact of this change in technology.

"Robert didn't realize until he started this project what a massive amount of capital and machinery was required to make film," she says. "Because of the precision and the chemistry, the way film needs to be manufactured, you have to make miles and miles of film, to be consumed by millions of people, in order for the production of film to be a viable business model."

The architecture of the factories is distinct because film needed to be made in "light-tight" buildings, Hostetler says.

"They seem very geometric, like a study in squares and planes," she says. "There are no windows, so most of the architectural landscapes appear very closed."

Hostetler says that not only does this exhibit document the end of an era, the images themselves are stunning.

"The scale of these images has you, as a viewer, looking closely at the textures, surfaces and planes that created these spaces," she says. "There is a certain sadness and elegy, particularly in the implosions. These photographs employ a very interesting use of color and composition and are able to elicit emotion because of their scale and physical presence."

No one knows where this story will lead.

"We are living in this change in photography right now," she says. "We all take pictures. Photography will be around, in its many forms, in perpetuity."

De Palma is a Rochester-area freelance writer.

If you go

What: "The Disappearance of Darkness — Photography at the End of the Analog Era."

When: Through Jan. 4.

Where: George Eastman House, 900 East Ave.

For information: EastmanHouse.org.

Exhibit note: A space, adjacent to the exhibit, called "Photo In Flux," has been designated as a place to continue the conversation about the past and future of photography, either online or in writing. You can also participate by going to the "Photo In Flux" Tumbler page or submit your responses to eastmanhouse.org/photoinflux.