Like Marshall Fieldʼs, Woolworth's and Pan Am, another American legend has fallen as Kodak is swept off its feet by the rolling changes in financial tides. The company that changed photography from a complicated, inconvenient profession to a leisure activity every mom, pop and amateur artist could afford has filed bankruptcy, showing that even nostalgia can't boost stock prices.

Over the past 200 years, photography has moved from a complicated, even hazardous profession to a past time anyone with even a cell phone can attempt. Real leaps in innovation began in the 1800s, with French inventors Joseph Niépce and Louis Daguerre making the idea of capturing visual scenes a commercially viable reality.