Summary

Black and white silver gelatin photograph looking east across vacant land towards Building 2, Emulsion Making, and Building 13, Paper Finishing, Kodak factory, Coburg, late 1959.

This is a ground level view that features the west faces of Building 2, a single-storey west wing in the centre foreground and the multi-storey section in the right background. To the left is the west face of Building 13. At this stage of construction, all the sections of Building 2 are completed externally and was being fitted out with the relevant production facilities, internal services and office accommodation. The external brick walls and aluminium roofing of Building 13 is still under construction. One of the main high and low voltage electricity supplies can be seen following the main east-west road (Biggs Road) between buildings 2 and 13. Gatehouse Road is visible in the foreground between Buildings 2 and 3 (unsighted to the right of the photograph).

Building 2 consisted of a special purpose built multi-storey (incorporating ground to third floors, basement and penthouse levels), with single-storey east and west wings. All emulsion making production operations were carried out in the multi-storey section under safelight conditions, except for the daylight can washing area on the second floor. Smaller structures housing plumbing and lift services can be seen on the penthouse level, along with the flyover to Building 3, Emulsion Making, at the third floor level. The west wing housed all Emulsion Making department management and production administration offices. Small scale product trial and development coating machines (namely J5 and J7) were also located behind these offices.

Kodak manufactured and distributed a wide range of photographic products to Australasia, such as, film, paper, chemicals, cameras and miscellaneous equipment. Its client base included amateur and professional photographers as well as specialist medical and graphic art professionals who used photography, x-ray and other imaging techniques.

This photograph is part of the Kodak collection of products, promotional materials, photographs and working life artefacts collected from Kodak Australasia in 2005 after the manufacturing plant at Coburg had closed down the year before.

Description of Content

Image of a construction site featuring a grass field in the foreground and two intersecting roads in the mid-ground. To the rear of the image are single and multi-storey buildings under construction, with an earthworks area to the left.

Physical Description

Black and white silver gelatin photograph printed on light weight paper, landscape format.

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