Colorama: A Giant Slice of Americana

FAMILY IN CONVERTIBLE SOMEWHERE IN TEXAS<br> Jim Pond<br> June 3–24, 1968
FAMILY STORY TIME<br> Colorama #252 by Norm Kerr<br> March 1965
CLOSING UP THE SUMMER COTTAGE, <br> QUOGUE, NEW YORK<br> Colorama #126 by Ralph Amdursky and Charles Baker, <br> Art direction by Norman Rockwell<br> September 1957
TEEN DANCE IN BASEMENT RECREATION ROOM<br> Colorama #193 by Lee Howick and Neil Montanus<br> October 1961
Colorama #553 on display in Grand Central Terminal, 1988<br> Photograph by Norm Kerr

An obituary appeared in The New York Times this week for Neil Montanus, a former Kodak photographer who died at the age of 92. Montanus had a long, successful career as a commercial photographer but is perhaps best known for his colossal images of idealized American life produced as Colorama photographs. In 1950, Eastman Kodak Company installed the first Colorama in Grand Central Terminal, New York. Billed as the world’s largest photographs, a mile of cold-cathode tubes lit Kodak transparencies creating 16-feet-wide-by-18-feet-tall images of family rituals, exotic travel, sporting events and icons. Montanus photographed 55 of the 565 Coloramas that appeared in Grand Central Station.

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