How Polaroid pioneered the instant photography revolution (2024)
The Polaroid camera bypassed the entire process of film development, thus providing photographers an immediate look at their work. Released for sale in 1948, the first version was an “instant” hit. Now, the museum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is showcasing the intersection of technology and art. Special correspondent Jared Bowen of WGBH reports.
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
Judy Woodruff:
Finally tonight: When it comes to photography, we're all pretty much living in the Insta world. We want our pictures now or never.
Many think it was Polaroid that set us on that path with its first revolutionary camera dating back to 1947.
The museum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is now telling the story of how the Polaroid era began, and the artists who were there to make it happen.
Special correspondent bow Jared Bowen of public media station WGBH Boston reports.
It's part of our ongoing series on arts and culture, Canvas.
Jared Bowen:
For Ansel Adams, it answered the call of the wild. Chuck Close used it to get up close and personal. William Wegman thought it was horseplay.
It was the Polaroid camera. And when it came to photography, it changed everything.
William Ewing:
You can see around me on the walls all kinds of surfaces and all kinds of ways of manipulating the materials.
I think, probably, it drove some of the engineers at Polaroid mad, because the artists were just ignoring the rules and just making it up.
Jared Bowen:
Here at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a few blocks away from where the Polaroid camera was invented, are decades of Polaroids.
Virtually from the day it was born, artists were given cameras and film to experiment, says curator William Ewing, starting with Ansel Adams.
William Ewing:
He was the bait. Ansel gets very excited at times. He said, oh, you should use it. They should use it in the theater. You should use it in astronomy. He gets really excited.
The Polaroid camera bypassed the entire process of developing film. For the first time ever, artists had an immediate look at their work.
William Ewing:
It was a very small thing you could hold in the hand, but you had to participate in the making of the picture. The thing whirred and clicked. The picture came out and developed slowly. And that was described as magic.
Deborah Douglas:
I'm going to take a picture now, Jared.
Jared Bowen:
Do you want me to pose for you?
Deborah Douglas:
Yes, please. OK.
(CAMERA CLICKING)
Deborah Douglas:
OK.
And it's going to take probably 20 full minutes, but that blue sheet is the opacification, and in a couple of minutes, this will emerge. So I'm going to take…
Jared Bowen:
Twenty minutes?
Deborah Douglas:
I know. It's not an instant at all.
(LAUGHTER)
Jared Bowen:
Deborah Douglas is the purveyor of Polaroid at the MIT Museum. The pioneer, though, was Edwin Land, owner of an innovation lab who conceived of an instant camera in 1943 and launched it into top-secret development.
Deborah Douglas:
It's called SX-70, S for secret, X for experimental, and 70 because that's the number. It could have been 68, 69, 71, 72.
Jared Bowen:
The camera was an ingenious combination of mechanics and chemistry.
Deborah Douglas:
All the little molecules are going around, and it says, oh, I need a red one here, a yellow one here, a blue one here, and just like your television that can combine red, green, blue on your screen and miraculously create the full spectrum.
Jared Bowen:
The first Polaroid went on sale in Boston the day after Thanksgiving, 1948. It sold out in hours.
Deborah Douglas:
Land didn't actually believe in marketing. He was even skeptical of his own company's efforts in that front.
He said, you just have to have a feel for this. This proved, by the way, very influential to a generation of entrepreneurs, most notably, Steve Jobs and Apple.
Jared Bowen:
Well we're sitting on this floor right now that we would all recognize, wouldn't we?
Deborah Douglas:
Yes, there's a rainbow stripe. And so it's not coincidental that the first Apple logos are rainbow stripes. That is an intentional homage to Edwin Land.
Jared Bowen:
Of course, the cool quotient came from the artists, who were given cameras and film to take the technology wherever they wanted.
Tom Norton:
It freed you up from all those chemicals and the processes in the labs and everything else. You could control it all yourself.
Jared Bowen:
Artist Tom Norton had his go at Polaroid in the early 1980s.
Tom Norton:
It's a vertical format. And I didn't want that. I want dancers to be jumping left-right. And so the only way to do that is to have a mirror system, so I made a mirror system that the camera was actually facing sideways.
Jared Bowen:
Elsa Dorfman would use the Polaroid for portraiture. With Polaroid, Andy Warhol could be even more prolific. And Barbara Crane could revel in color.
William Ewing:
These people felt they were part of a community. They weren't alone. So, you didn't just do your photographs, bring them to Polaroid, and forget about them. They would enter into the collection.
Jared Bowen:
As we see here, in a history and appreciation that's still developing.
Do we have to do something? Do we have to shake it?
Deborah Douglas:
No, you don't have to shake it. In fact, the engineers hated that.
(LAUGHTER)
Jared Bowen:
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jared Bowen in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Polaroid camera bypassed the entire process of film development
process of film development
Photographic processing or photographic development is the chemical means by which photographic film or paper is treated after photographic exposure to produce a negative or positive image.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Photographic_processing
The Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM) was formed in 1970 by two African American Polaroid employees, Ken Williams and Caroline Hunter, when they discovered that the company's products were being used by the South African government to create photographs for the hated passbooks that all Africans were ...
The company's launch of the Polaroid Land camera in 1947, which marked the genesis of instant photography, and subsequent introduction of the breakthrough Polaroid SX-70 camera in 1972 and many others, would firmly cement Polaroid's standing as a technological pioneer and cultural phenomenon during its peak.
In fewer than five years, Polaroid had invented and mastered all of the necessary new technologies to demonstrate Land's instant photography system. Land made the first public demonstration of instant photography on February 21, 1947, during a meeting of the Optical Society of America in New York City.
The introduction of instant camera technologies was important to society because it allowed for more creativity among camera users. Instead of having to use a darkroom to develop photographs, users were able to explore and document their world and experiences as they occurred.
The Polaroid camera bypassed the entire process of developing film. For the first time ever, artists had an immediate look at their work. William Ewing: It was a very small thing you could hold in the hand, but you had to participate in the making of the picture.
This new instant camera was revolutionary: bringing the magic of creating a photograph right in front of your eyes to the world for the first time. It was a product right at the intersection of art and science, powered by incredibly complex chemistry and enabling a world of creativity.
The Polaroid camera quickly became a cultural phenomenon, capturing the imagination of people around the world. Its popularity was fueled by its simplicity, accessibility, and the joy of witnessing a photograph materialize right before one's eyes.
It was in 1948 when Edwin Land invented the Polaroid Land Model 95 camera – which became the breakthrough of instant photography. This camera utilised two separate rolls of different charges; positive and negative charges respectively which allowed photographs to be created inside the camera.
The company was founded in 1937 by Edwin H.Land, a young scientist and inventor who had a passion for photography. In 1947, Polaroid introduced its first instant camera, the Model 95. This camera used a unique film and development process that allowed users to produce a finished print in just 60 seconds.
After the war, the growth of the American economy made it possible for new industries to flourish. One of these industries was instant photography. Polaroid photography focused on minimizing the time between taking the photograph and viewing the image.
It was originally called “The LAnd Camera” and was sold at the big price of $89! Polaroid designed and produced loads of products for the U.S. armed services during WWII. This included a night vision device and coloured filters for rangefinders on periscopes!
Polaroid was a victim of patent violations and poor company policy (a serious reputational risk), and just couldn't adapt their strategies fast enough. The business principles that kept them successful since founding in 1937 started to fail right around the year 2000.
Instant cameras have found many uses throughout their history, becoming especially useful for passport photos, ultrasound photos, fashion shoots and other uses which required an instant photo. They were also used by police officers and fire investigators because of their ability to create an unalterable instant photo.
The Polaroid story in short: The product we refer to really is called Instant Film by the American company Polaroid. Small-format photographs are developed in-camera in minutes. Introduced in 1948, and from 1963 onwards in color, Polaroids became a pop culture phenomenon in the 1970s.
In 1943, Land made another breakthrough, inspired by his daughter. She asked him why she couldn't see photos right after they were taken. Thus Land set out to develop instant photography. In a radical departure from traditional photography, he created a tool with both a negative film and a positive receiving sheet.
Edwin Land in 1948, and early models were called Land cameras instead of “instant cameras.” The Model 95 was revolutionary for implementing self-developing “instant” film that essentially turned the inside of the handheld camera into a darkroom, processing the exposure before it was pulled from the camera.
Controversy. In 1970, Caroline Hunter and her co-worker, future husband Ken Williams, discovered the involvement of their employer, Polaroid, in the South African apartheid system as the producer of the passbook photos used to identify Black individuals in South Africa.
In 1947, Polaroid introduced its first instant camera, the Model 95. This camera used a unique film and development process that allowed users to produce a finished print in just 60 seconds. This was a revolutionary development that fundamentally changed the way people took and shared photographs.
The second Polacolor was an instant film product introduced in 1963 for use in Polaroid instant cameras for still photography. It produced small one-off color prints on paper.
Introduction: My name is Pres. Lawanda Wiegand, I am a inquisitive, helpful, glamorous, cheerful, open, clever, innocent person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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