Color photography became common for everyday consumers in the mid-1960s, roughly three decades after the first viable color films hit the market. The technology existed as early as 1935, but high costs, slow film speeds, and complicated processing kept it out of most people’s hands until cheaper cameras and simplified film formats finally closed the gap.
The First Viable Color Films: 1935 to 1936
Eastman Kodak introduced Kodachrome transparency film in 1935, and Agfa in Germany followed with Agfa Color-Neu transparency film in 1936. These were the first commercially available films that could capture the full color spectrum in a single exposure. Before that, color photographs required cumbersome processes involving glass plates, most notably the Autochrome method that had been the primary way to make color photos since the early 1900s. National Geographic’s first full-time editor was a devoted user of autochromes, commissioning glass plate color works from photographers worldwide. But autochromes were fragile, expensive, and impractical for casual use.
Kodachrome changed the game technically, but it didn’t immediately change what most people loaded into their cameras. The film was slow, meaning it needed a lot of light to produce a good image. Early Kodachrome had an ISO of just 10, which made indoor and low-light photography nearly impossible without a flash or tripod. Most color photographers in this era shot slides rather than prints, and the results required projectors to view properly.
Why Color Stayed Expensive Through the 1950s
For roughly two decades after Kodachrome’s debut, black-and-white film dominated amateur photography for one simple reason: cost. In 1957, a 36-exposure roll of black-and-white Tri-X film cost $1.15. Color negative film like Kodacolor had been available since World War II, but it was slow, expensive to develop, and even more expensive to print. Most people had to send their color film away for processing, adding days or weeks of waiting to the already higher price tag.
The speed issue compounded the cost problem. Neither Kodachrome nor Ektachrome was fast enough for the kind of spontaneous snapshots families wanted to take at birthday parties, holiday dinners, or school events. Black-and-white film was forgiving, affordable, and could be developed locally or even at home. For the average household in the 1950s, color photography was a special-occasion splurge, not a default choice.
The 1960s Tipping Point
Two developments in 1963 pushed color photography toward mass adoption. Kodak launched the Instamatic camera, a simple, affordable device that used drop-in film cartridges instead of the fiddly loading mechanisms of older cameras. You didn’t need to thread film onto a spool or worry about exposing it to light. The Instamatic brought a flood of new users into photography, and with them came enormous demand for color prints. Industrial development labs expanded rapidly to process the volume.
That same year, Polaroid introduced Polacolor, the first instant color film. Paired with the Model 100 Land camera, it offered fully automatic exposure control and delivered a color print in about a minute. Polaroid’s founder, Edwin Land, designed the system so that anyone of any age and experience level could use it. By the 1970s, Polaroid instant cameras and film had become cheaper and widely available, making color snapshots almost effortless.
Together, these innovations removed the two biggest barriers that had kept color photography niche: complexity and wait time. By the late 1960s, color film outsold black-and-white for consumer use, and by the early 1970s, shooting in color was simply what most people did.
Color in Print and Media
Consumer adoption was only part of the story. Magazines and newspapers had their own slower transition. National Geographic was an early champion of color, using autochromes extensively in the early twentieth century and shifting to Kodachrome once it became available in 1935. But most newspapers didn’t regularly print color photographs until the 1980s and 1990s, when advances in printing technology made it economically feasible for daily press runs. For decades, the public saw color in magazines, on slides projected at family gatherings, and in personal photo albums, while the news arrived in black and white.
Fine Art’s Late Acceptance
Even as millions of families were filling albums with color snapshots, the art world treated color photography with suspicion. Serious photographers and gallery curators considered black and white the only legitimate artistic medium. Color was seen as commercial, amateurish, even vulgar.
That changed largely because of one photographer. William Eggleston, now called the “father of color photography” as an art form, had been working in relative isolation since the 1960s. In 1969, he brought his color prints to John Szarkowski, the photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Seven years later, in 1976, MoMA opened Eggleston’s solo show, “Color Photographs.” It was a watershed moment. Critics were divided at the time, but the exhibition cemented color photography’s recognition as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston’s influence rippled through generations of artists, including Nan Goldin, Jeff Wall, David Lynch, and Andreas Gursky.
By the late 1970s, the holdout was over. Color photography was common not just in family life and commercial work, but in galleries and museums as well. The entire arc, from Kodachrome’s 1935 debut to true ubiquity, took about 40 years.