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(Photos: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

What do you get when you combine America's History Channel-stoked fascination with all things World War II (admit it, you're not immune to the charms of grainy Hitler footage) with the burgeoning national pastime known as "scrapbooking"? Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell, a special that airs tomorrow night on the National Geographic channel. They had us at Nazi Scrapbooks. Sandwiched between episodes of The Dog Whisperer, the hour-long special provides a look into the photo album of SS officer Karl Höecker, the adjutant to the commandant at Auschwitz. Taken between May and December 1944, the chilling photos capture quotidian life at the concentration camp for Nazi officers and staff: relaxing on the terrace, eating blueberries, stopped mid-singalong by a sudden downpour. In its monstrous ordinariness, Höecker's scrapbook reveals the snapshot as an ideal medium for capturing the banality of evil.

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Even an imploring Paul Simon chorus couldn't save it. Kodak is taking Kodachrome away. The company has announced that it will retire the world's first commercially successful color film, which today accounts for "a fraction of one percent of Kodak's total sales of still-picture films," according to a press release. While Kodak remains the global leader in the dwindling film business, the company now derives about 70% of its revenues from commercial and consumer digital businesses.

You—or your parents, or their storage unit—probably have albums full of Kodachrome memories, but Kodak has arranged its own online slide show of "great Kodachrome moments" (best viewed with the aforementioned anthem playing, preferably on a record player). They include Steve McCurry's famed Afghan girl photo that ran on the cover of a 1985 issue of National Geographic. McCurry will shoot one of the last rolls of Kodachrome, and his photos will be donated to the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. Meanwhile, there's still time to stockpile Kodachrome, but you better act fast. Kodak estimates that current supplies will run out by early this fall at the current sales pace.

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We've heard that George Eastman wrote only in green ink, so it makes sense that the company he founded is stepping up its ecofriendliness quotient. Eastman Kodak announced this week that it has adopted a new set of "sustainability goals" that over the next three years will aim to integrate sustainability principles into the everyday work of its employees, increase the number of Energy Star-qualified products, and measure and further reduce the company's water usage worldwide. In recent years, Kodak has succeeded in reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 40% since 2002 through initiatives such as camera recycling and the development of waste-minimizing graphic printing technologies. Among the new goals are to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions (by 50% by 2012) and cut in half energy emissions at Kodak operations worldwide. On the product side, the company has pledged to "improve the environmental attributes of Kodak products throughout their life cycle" and take a closer look at the practices of their suppliers.

Polaroid's decision last year to discontinue its instant photography products has led to more than widespread film hoarding. We've also detected a swell of nostalgia for the distinctive look of the company's photos, tucked inside their invariable white frames and immune to the magic of Photoshop. Even the digital realm that sped the death of instant photography is getting into the act, with a range of standalone tools that allow users to "Polaroidize" any photo. We like Poladroid, an easy-to-use application that transforms digital photos into high-resolution pseudoPolaroids. The program comes complete with Polaroid sound effects and quirks: sessions are limited to ten images (just like a Polaroid film cassette), virtually shaking the photos seems to hasten their development, and the resulting images contain "random and realistic Polaroid-like color variation." Picture imperfect.

(Poladroid photo by Flickr user bawtrees)

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He squats in the corner, over a slab of grating, looking down his nose through squinted eyes and pointing his chin at the camera. Sassy. The college freshman wears a Panama hat and dangles a cigarette, while the lightswitch above him gives a diagonal zip to the composition. That's "Barry" Obama as captured by his Occidental College classmate Lisa Jack in 1980. Tomorrow, Jack's photos, along with a blow-up of her original contact sheet, go on view in "Barack Obama: The Freshman," an exhibition at the M+B Gallery in West Hollywood. Prices will start at $1,000 to $4,500 for the photographic prints, each available in limited editions of 230.

"I'm the 49-year-old woman who wanted to be a photographer but didn't follow through," Jack told the Los Angeles Times. "I'm the Susan Boyle of the photography world." Jack, who works as a psychology professor and therapist, kept her photos out of circulation until Obama was elected, allowing them to be published only in the pages of Time. Now, on the eve of the exhibition, she's dreaming big. According to the LAT, Jack has invited Obama, who is happens to be visiting Los Angeles today, to check out the show. She's also hoping that Shepard Fairey will "do his artfully iconic thing with her 'Freshman' images."

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(Photo: Helen Levitt, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Today the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its renovated American Wing (First Lady Michelle Obama performed the ribbon-cutting honors) and tomorrow throws open the doors to its Francis Bacon retrospective, but should when you make it to the Met this summer, don't miss the selection of Helen Levitt photographs that have just gone on view in the the museum's Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery. The Met recently established an endowment fund and promised gift of artwork in memory of Levitt, the great American street photographer who died on March 29 at the age of 95. The fund, created through a planned gift of the artist's sister-in-law, will support the Met's acquisition of photographs by Levitt and other mid-20th-century American photographers working in her tradition. Twelve of Levitt's photographs have also been promised as a gift to the museum, which already has 43 in its collection (including "New York," the 1938 photo shown above).

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Photojournalism is the focus of Lens, the newest addition to The New York Times' gaggle of blogs. "Lens will be a showcase for the work of Times photographers, but it will also highlight the best images from other newspapers, magazines, news organizations and picture agencies, and from around the Web," wrote David W. Dunlap in a post introducing the blog. Also look for Lens to highlight photography books, exhibitions, and work from the Times' vast pictorial archive while building a community of readers (or viewers, as the case may be) that will occasionally be tapped to submit their own photos. The fun starts with Fred R. Conrad's ode to slow photography, which includes his Hiroshi Sugimoto-flavored black-and-white shot of an old-school Jersey City movie theater, and Stephen Crowley on the strange ritual that is a White House photo op. Yesterday, Todd Heisler posted a series of photos that all contained his four-legged nemesis: plastic chairs. "They come in different colors but they are all variations of the same design," writes Heisler. "Not unlike the humans who rest upon them."

Given his expertise at crafting and capturing candy-colored hyperrealities, one might expect the home of photographer David LaChapelle to be awash in glitter, shocking pink, and shocking pink glitter. Nope. We recognized this real estate listing as LaChapelle's three-bedroom Hollywood Hills home, a "charming 1920s original Spanish with great open floor plan, wonderful light, great outdoor spaces, and true swimmers pool and secluded spa." The 1,912-square-foot house can be yours for $1.65 million. Among the tip-offs that this understated abode is home to the man Richard Avedon once compared to René Magritte? The copy of the classic Taschen megavolume SUMO by Helmut Newton (that's it in the living room, atop its distinctive Philippe Starck-designed display stand). Located only "moments from Chateau Marmont," LaChapelle's house will also be proximal to a new retail project that we hear is among his latest investments: a Sunset Boulevard lingerie boutique that will be run by Courtney Love.

After a drawn-out sale of its assets in bankruptcy court, and a glimmer of hope for a turnaround at the hands of private equity firm Patriarch Partners, Polaroid is now officially in the hands of Gordon Brothers Brands and Hilco Consumer Capital, whose other portfolio brands include recent retail-sector casualties The Sharper Image and Linens n' Things. For $88 million, the liquidation firms acquired the Polaroid brand, along with the company's intellectual property and inventory. Now it's onto what Scott Hardy, Polaroid's newly named president, describes as a "full-scale global licensing and distribution strategy for wholesale, direct-to-retail, and e-commerce businesses." We're not exactly sure what that means, but we hope it doesn't end, à la Pierre Cardin, in Polaroid-brand duty-free cigarettes and tears. In a statement announcing the deal closing, the new owners were enthusiastic about the potential to slap the Polaroid name on everything from digital photo frames to portable DVD players. They also noted their plan to maintain Polaroid's Minnesota headquarters along with the majority of its Minnesota-based employees.

(Photo: Ritchard Ton. See more of his work on Flickr.)

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Photographer and documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield creates images that sear themselves into your brain. Her latest project is Kids + Money, a short film about kiddie consumption that debuted last fall on HBO. Greenfield is also one of eight photographers featured in "L8S ANG3LES"—the inaugural exhibition of the Annenberg Space for Photography that is on view through June 30 in, yes, Los Angeles—and a traveling show of her work is on the road through 2010. Is it any wonder that she's looking for a multi-tasking studio manager? The hunt is on for "a motivated, organized person to manage busy, day-to-day operations" at Lauren Greenfield Photography in Venice, California. The position entails working with everyone from magazine editors and advertisers to museums and galleries to facilitate Greenfield's array of photography and filmmaking projects. Bring your problem-solving skills and ability to thrive under pressure—and a healthy appetite probably wouldn't hurt.

Learn more about and apply for this studio manager, Lauren Greenfield Photography job or view all the current mediabistro.com design/art/photo jobs.