Kodachrome

The other thing was that Utah has amazing state parks.

And I wanted to visit one in particular called Kodachrome Basin because it was named by National Geographic photographers back in the 1930s.

When central Utah was virtually unmapped and unexplored, NatGeo sent some explorers there.

And they saw this place that had amazing colors, like this new film that had come out called Kodachrome.

So they called it Kodachrome Basin.

And we had to go there.

We had to camp.

Instinctively, the photo doesn't appear to have been taken with a digital camera.

It seems to be shot with Kodachrome or Fuji, whatever.

But you could tell it does feel like that is an old film camera.

And I was gauging around the 90s, partly because we could see Jeffrey Epstein's face, but the style of sunglasses, his hair, his jacket, and the other people holding up the check, what Joel is wearing, and some couple in the background.

This was the 90s.

So Kodachrome, who knows what kind of film it was.

The boxes were not open.

They stayed closed.

Why we're finding it now.

Do people in this documentary get to actually go through, like people who are legitimate, able to study the reel, go through the negatives and go, oh yeah, this was recorded on this reel with a Kodak film camera on Kodachrome.

Or are they presented, hey, look at this footage we found.

See the reel? See the shiny reel? Look, flash, look at this.

go hey make a better version of this so it's a little bit more colorful and it's slightly different and there's a person wearing a costume and there's a person on a horse here like bam there you go spit out the clip cut out the bad parts blur motion blur some stuff together or whatever and then go, okay, Hey, what if I put this on a screen? Can I, can I still record this on a reel? Is it, is it possible? Is that real still good quality? Can I record this? So it's on the reel now.

There's a lot of things that come up into question here.

No, there's no labs that can supposedly actually process Kodachrome reels.

So how do they inspect it? How do they know? How did they get the footage? Sorry, this is on the reel.

It was a world both ancient and alive.

55 years later, I treasure those precious aging Kodachrome transparencies from that first journey.

As an accompanying witness, those slides sparked a lasting curiosity to document the visual historical development of Mecca and Medina.

I've continued to visit and document these sacred spaces One afternoon as I gazed upon the sacred house, the pilgrims encircling the Kaaba appeared as a beautiful necklace draped around the house of God.