Summary

Black and white photograph of the multi-storey Kodachrome building at the Kodak Abbotsford factory building, circa 1950s.

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

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.

Description of Content

A view of a five storey brick factory building taken from nearby building four or five storeys up. The factory is visible over the tops of trees and a lower brick and concrete building with a corrugated roof in the foreground. A flagpole flying the Australian flag is positioned on the top of the building.

Physical Description

A black and white printed on textured paper. Landscape formate with white borders.

Significance

This item, showing the site of the former Kodak factory in Abbotsford, enhances our understanding of the changing nature of the photographic manufacturing in Melbourne, and also traces the changes in industrial sites in inner Melbourne over the twentieth century. This is an important theme for Melbourne, where de-industrialisation has changed the shape and culture of the city in a multitude of ways since the decline of local industry in the late-twentieth century. That Kodak staff took this photograph of its former premises twenty years after it relocated, shows that the company was also interested in its heritage.

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