In 2012, the Eastman Kodak Company, in Rochester, New York, declared bankruptcy. That same year, ten Magnum photographers--Chien-Chi Chang, Jim Goldberg, Bruce Gilden, Susan Meiselas, Martin Parr, Paulo Pellegrin, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Alec Soth, Larry Towell and Donovan Wylie--established a temporary base in Rochester. Over nearly three weeks, they worked with residents and Rochester's photographic community from the Visual Studies Workshop, the George Eastman House and the Rochester Institute of Technology to document the city. The photographers selected 1,000 images as the final archive; all 1,000 images are included in this volume. Three sets of the images were printed. One portfolio resides at the George Eastman House, the second is in a private collection and the third has been dispersed via the 1,000 copies of this limited edition: each copy contains a single print from the set.
"In 2012, the Eastman Kodak Company declared bankruptcy. That same year, a group of ten photographers from Magnum Photos--Jim Goldberg, Bruce Gilden, Susan Meiselas, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Alec Soth, Larry Towell, Alex Webb, and Donovan Wylie, plus Chien-Chi Chang, who documented the process in audio and video--established a temporary base of operations in Rochester, New York, former home to the once-dominant manufacturer of photographic film. Their goal: to create both a documentary archive of that city's culture and landscape, and a photo-based experience engaging its residents; and to investigate a community of picture-makers comprised not only of Eastman Kodak, but also the Visual Studies Workshop, George Eastman House, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the citizensof Rochester. Over the course of almost three weeks, photographers, students, faculty, and residents worked together to create a visual record of the city and its people at a time of significant transition. Nathan Lyons, founding director of the Visual Studies Workshop, describes the resultas 'not only a major documentary project, but a celebration of photography within the city that had for years been a center of imaging technologies'"--Publisher's website.
