Colorama: Images of an Idealized America

Between 1950 and 1990, the Eastman Kodak Company installed 565 color transparencies 18 feet tall and 60 feet long in New York City’s Grand Central Station. The images, known as Coloramas, portrayed a Norman Rockwell-like, predominantly white idealization of American life, while also advertising various products and activities.

“Colorama,” an exhibition of 36 panoramic prints of those images organized by the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, will open tomorrow at the Southampton Arts Center and remain on view through Dec. 31. A public reception will take place Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.

As a major corporate and aesthetic undertaking, the production of Coloramas involved Kodak’s marketing and technical staffs and scores of photographers, among them such notables as Ansel Adams, Ernst Haas, and Eliot Porter.

During the 40 years of the images’ display, America went through the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the 1960s rise of the counterculture, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, but the images continued to present an idyllic picture of the country’s landscapes, villages, and families. Ronald Reagan tried to return America to its traditional values, to bring image and reality together, but time has shown the impossibility of that dream.

Amy Kirwin, director of programs at the arts center, said that “each Colorama in the exhibition so beautifully represents a time of great optimism, purity, and joy. We can’t think of a better compilation of work to close out 2016 at the Southampton Arts Center. We feel confident that every visitor will leave with a smile.”