Joseph (left) and Thomas Kiley have owned and operated Katonah Image for nearly a quarter century and have turned their hobbies into sources of income by restoring and building mannequins and collector fortune teller amusement machines. (Reece Alvarez)
How does a business survive for 25 years, let alone in an industry that has seen its goliaths quake and crumble to rapidly changing technology?
You adapt, said Joseph Kiley, a John Jay High School graduate who, together with his twin brother, Thomas, runs Katonah Image, a relic of a bygone era of film cameras and one of the longest continuously family-owned businesses in Katonah, celebrating a quarter century this November.
Established in 1988 on Woods Bridge Road, the residential building turned photography studio and lab started in the days before digital photography and home printing as a one-hour photo development lab and commercial photography studio.
Joseph believes there will always be a niche for fine art photography, with purists who insist on and appreciate the qualities of film photography and chemical developing, yet he has no illusions about the future of photography.
“Digital is not going away, it is here to stay,” Joseph said. “It is your traditional stuff that is going to be disappearing.”
Acknowledging the cost reduction in equipment and production, as well as the increased access digital photography has brought to the masses, he laments the loss of artistic talent and effort required to make photographs that have rapidly eroded with the explosive popularity of digital photography.
“The old way you had to be a little more talented,” he said. “It has definitely lost a little bit of its uniqueness.”
Digital photography has become so advanced that now even blurry photos can be corrected and manipulated after a photograph is taken — formerly an inescapable error that would require a reshoot, he said.
Bridging the decades
Before digital dominated the photography business a decade ago, Katonah Image based its business on developing photographs, processing slides, and doing brisk business during the boom of Kodak’s disposable camera, Joseph said.
As a symbol of the tremendous upheaval the industry underwent with the introduction of digital, Kodak, a former titan of the industry, held 90% of the market share of photography film sales in the United Sates in 1976, yet underwent bankruptcy in 2012 and made major changes to its product line, nearly ending its formerly ubiquitous 35mm film line.
“We still print pictures, but the volume is a lot less,” Joseph said. “Every year we see less and less because less people are printing pictures.”
The drop in photo printing is ironic, as more photos are being taken now than ever before with the rise of social media and the constant stream of photos being uploaded, he said. To adjust to the new times, Joseph has taken on the technical aspects of digital photography, helping customers understand its nuances, as well as working as a commercial product photographer for the likes of Target and Kohl’s.
Joseph restores and builds from scratch amusement fortune teller machines such as this one featured in his store. (Reece Alvarez)
He also specializes in restoring fortuneteller machines made popular in early 20th Century arcades, boardwalks, and most famously in the 1988 film Big starring Tom Hanks.
Fortuneteller machines are highly valued by certain collector communities, he said, and can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars, stretching into the hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, Thomas has maintained a mannequin-refurbishing business, with a range of products from bare forms ready to be dressed for storefront windows to full replicas of iconic celebrities like Farrah Fawcett and Elvis Presley. His mannequins have even been featured in large production commercials.
Together the two men have kept their business alive by adapting to the shifts in technology and branching out their artistic talents to create a unique and eclectic store over the decades — easily observed by the rows of mannequins and fortuneteller machines prominently featured in their store.
“You have to reinvent yourself,” Joseph said. “I think the future of photography is everyone can be a photographer, the cameras are great, but it is always the individual that has the eye for the great pictures.”