Kodachrome Skies No More- End of An Era As Photography Pioneer and American Icon Eastman Kodak Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Kodak Building seen from downtown Rochester, NY. Photo- Carol White Llewellyn

In a sad but widely-anticipated move, Rochester NY based imaging company Eastman Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday afternoon.

Kodak, which is more than 130 years old, filed for Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The imaging company is expected to continue to try to auction off a lucrative portfolio of 1,100 patents that could be worth around $3 billion while in bankruptcy. Interested parties, which reportedly include Google [NASDAQ: GOOG] and Apple [NASDAQ: AAPL], seemed to realize they would have greater leverage if they waited for Kodak to file for bankruptcy.

“Chapter 11 gives us the best opportunities to maximize the value in two critical parts of our technology portfolio,” CEO Antonio Perez said in a statement, pointing to “our digital capture patents, which are essential for a wide range of mobile and other consumer electronic devices that capture digital images…and our breakthrough printing and deposition technologies.”

Kodak said it anticipates completing its U.S.-based restructuring during 2013. In the meantime, it expects to pay employee wages and benefits and continue customer programs.

To keep the company operating while in reorganization, Kodak said it has secured a $950 million debtor-in-possession, or DIP, financing with an 18-month maturity from Citigroup [NYSE: C].

Lazard [NYSE: LAZ] and FTI Consulting are advising Kodak and its board on the bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in shares of Eastman Kodak and taken steps towards de-listing it from the exchange.

Most day to day operations at Eastman Kodak will likely remain unchanged during the bankruptcy. As of 2011, the company employs 7,100 people in the Rochester, NY area and an estimated 18,800 nationwide.

Kodak was founded in 1880 when George Eastman began the commercial manufacture of dry plates from a leased office building in downtown Rochester. Within 8 years, Kodak produced a fixed-focus handheld camera that almost singlehandedly began the epoch of amateur photography. By 1900, Eastman introduced the inexpensive handheld Brownie camera, which was in production (with many variants) for more than 6 decades. However, the company was slow to adapt in the age of digital photography, and while they held a number of digital imaging patents and introduced their own line of printers and ink cartridges, this did not translate to commercial success.

On a personal note, however predictable this was, Kodak's bankruptcy filing still saddens me tremendously. I've done some professional photography work before and I cut my teeth on Kodak- including their now-discontinued line of Kodachrome slide film [Fujifilm would occasionally give me photos with an odd greenish or bluish tint- NANESB!].

For all those wonderful and even mundane moments in my life that I had been able to photograph, it was Kodak that was in the camera.