Workers Leaving Kodak Factory

Workers at Kodak's photographic factory find themselves on the other side of the camera.

Employees at Kodak's photographic factory in Harrow find themselves on the other side of the camera in this late example of the already venerable 'factory gate' film. Kodak's Harrow factory - the US company's first in the UK - was already a quarter-century old by the time these images were shot. But the real stars here are the workers; the close camera position doesn't give us much of a view of the buildings.

The 'factory gate' film can trace its origins to the very dawn of cinema, when the pioneering filmmaking brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere filmed the workers leaving their own Lyon factory in 1895. In April 2016, Kodak Alaris announced that the now 'unviable' plant would close, with the likely loss of up to 250 jobs.