A business and tech story that has the ring of the inevitable to it. A company that practically alone, created the modern global high-tech consumer culture has declared bankruptcy. Eastman Kodak, this morning a penny stock on the New York Stock exchange. The company that invented consumer photography, more than a century ago has filed for bankruptcy, taken out a credit lifeline, put it's portfolio of storied patents on the block, and started a clock which may tick down to the total end of an American technology story that is among other things emblematic of the digital age we live in.

New Census numbers show that the U.S. has reached its worst level of poverty since 1983. About 15 percent of Americans live beneath the poverty line. That means that almost 46 million Americans do not earn $11,100 dollars a year as a single person; or, that they live in a family of four that makes under $22,314. The numbers beg the question: are the poor being forgotten in this country?

After 75 years, the era of processing Kodak's iconic color film will come to an end. Only one Kodachrome processing machine in the world remains in public use, and by the close of business today, it will be shut down for the final time. Though not without a mad rush in the last months from photographers around the world who wanted their last rolls developed. The machine sits in Dwayne’s Photo, a family-run business located in Parsons, Kansas. We talk with the store's general manager, Grant Steinly, about the end of the Kodachrome era.

All this week, we've talked about class on The Takeaway. And we gave you an assignment: take a photo of something in or around your house that indicates what class you're in. 

You sent us some great photos, which you can see after the jump — and we've asked photographer Karen Marshall to help curate them. Marshall is a documentary photographer. She's on the faculty at the International Center of Photography, where she is a seminar leader in the photojournalism documentary program.

Ernest Withers was a civil rights-era photojournalist who had access to some of the highest levels of the movement; over the weekend, we learned that Withers may have used his extraordinary access to sell information to the FBI, perceived enemies of the movement’s leaders.  

Everyone knows that beloved actor Leonard Nimoy will forever be associated with his most famous role: "Star Trek's" Mr. Spock. Of course, Nimoy went on to have a successful career in acting for decades after "Star Trek." Becoming known for just one iconic character can challenge any actor: Nimoy even wrote a pair of books balancing his own identity with Spock's. The first, "I Am Not Spock," was published in 1977, and the second, written nearly 20 years later, was called "I Am Spock."

Nimoy continues to work on another artistic passion that has a lot to do with the exploration of identity and self: portrait photography. His latest photo exhibition is called "Secret Selves." It's being shown at Mass MocA  (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) and also at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Mass.

If a picture paints a thousand words, what story is told by photographs of dilapidated buildings and abandoned factories? Photos of city ruins have been around for centuries, but they have not always been referred to as "ruin porn."  That's a phrase some criticsuse to describe recent photo journalism in Detroit. But does the term apply to art, as well as journalism?

For 57 days, oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, following an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. That's 57 days of trying to determine what the leak looks like, how big it is, who it's affecting and where the oil has hit land. In other words: 57 days to get pretty creative.

Jeff Warren is a student and fellow at the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. He's working on mapping the Gulf leak using digital cameras tied to balloons and kites. Here are some of the photos Warren and his colleagues have taken, using cheap digital cameras, kites, garbage bags, and tanks of helium.

"You take each image and you stretch it on a map and then every pixel of the location is a place in the real world," says Warren.

Lauren Craig is a master's student at Tulane and a photo volunteer. She's one of the people attaching a camera to a balloon and taking thousands upon thousands of photos.

After the jump, a short video by Jeff Warren in which he describes the project.

In 2009, the Pentagon lifted a ban that forbade members of the news media from covering the dignified transfer of the remains of U.S. servicemen and women at Dover Air Force Base. On April 5th, 2009, around forty reporters and photographers were present for the return of the remains of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Virginia.

But these days, there's often only one member of the news media present. Steve Ruark is a freelance photographer with the Associated Press. He has been to Dover for dignified transfers more than ninety times.

We remember photographer Charles Moore, who made his name taking iconic Civil Rights photographs down south during the 1960's. He died at the age of 79, Thursday. Hank Klibanoff, who is the author of the book, "The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation," helps us remember the life and work of this great photojournalist.

The tragedy in Haiti has been captured in powerful photographs that reveal the extent of the human suffering in that country. But are the images too graphic? At what point do photographs become exploitative and blur the the lines of ethical photojournalism?