"Dad, why can't I see the photos already?"
Little Jennifer's complaint about having to wait days for development to enjoy the images that her father, Edwin H. Land, took of her during a summer walk in Santa Fe (New Mexico), in 1943, led this inventor and scientist to ponder a solution.
Land had founded a company called Polaroid in 1937, but it was not until 1948 that he came up with the machine that revolutionized photography.
Yet just six decades later that company was a shambles.
In that accelerated journey, Polaroid had been a prosperous brand, known throughout the world for that object that looked like a toy and coined the concept of instant photography, that of the image that moments after shooting stuck out like a dirty tongue from the slot of the camera. camera.
In a minute, the gray emulsion was transformed into an image (ah,
fanning yourself with it to speed up the process was a legend, it wasn't necessary).
The first motto of that chemical magic was: “Shoot and see”.
More information
How to do abstract expressionism with a Polaroid
Polaroid cameras and their familiar square colored photos that we see so
retro
today became a pop icon, thanks to artists like Andy Warhol, who almost always carried one with him and for years used it for dozens of tests before his portraits.
They also passed through the hands of Robert Mappelthorpe, David Hockney or Helmut Newton, among many other creators.
An exhibition at the Fundación Barrié (A Coruña), until July 9, which has already passed through Vienna, Hamburg, , Berlin, Singapore and Massachusetts.
It addresses a dimension beyond the popular use of this camera at parties, baptisms, birthdays, weddings...
More than 300 works by a hundred authors, different camera models, prototypes, documentation... make up the
Project Polaroid sample.
At the intersection of art and technology
, organized by the MIT Museum of Cambridge (Massachusetts) and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.
At the presentation on March 10, Commissioner Barbara Hitchcock, who was Director of Cultural Affairs at Polaroid, stated: “This company was synonymous with creative medium, first in black and white and then in color.
Polaroid paper was a blank canvas for artists.”
The company even created a support program for creators, to whom it provided material.
'The perfect immersion' (1962).
In the image, Kathy Flicker, 14, in a practice entry into the water in the Dillon Gymnasium pool, on the Princeton University campus. George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock / Courtesy: The Polaroid Collection
One of them was the Spanish Joan Fontcuberta, winner of the National Photography Award.
"The Polaroid was very useful in studios for photographers to do tests, a test material before the final photo," he says over the phone.
"In my case, I wanted to take advantage of the
defects
of this system, such as the fact that the emulsion was easily scratched."
This is where his series of “frotogramas” was born at the end of the eighties, of which one piece is exhibited: “With an old bellows camera and a special film I photographed a cactus.
I rubbed the negative against the plant to leave my fingerprints on it”.
Fontcuberta recalls that when he showed his work in Barcelona, "the Polaroids raised their hands to their heads because I had delved into those defects."
"They told me, we'll pay you for the catalogue, but don't show it too much."
It is, however, a characteristic common to many of the pieces in the exhibition: the artists left the imperfections of that instant development, stains, different tones... it was seen as a sign of authenticity.
The artists seemed to follow Moholy-Nagy's maxim: "The limits of photography cannot be predicted."
The Barrié Foundation (A Coruña) brings to Spain the exhibition 'Polaroid Project.
At the intersection of art and technology', until July 9.
In the picture, 'Cody and Tank' (2004).SHELBY LEE ADAMS
'Edward Villalla' (1969).
The exhibition, which covers the presence of the camera and the Polaroid film in art, can be viewed free of charge.
Bill Eppridge / Courtesy: Estate of Bill Eppridge / Adrienne Aurichio
'October 24, 1981', a beautiful still life by André Kertész.
The exhibition is organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and the MIT Museum, Cambridge. Estate of André Kertész / Courtesy: Stephen Bulger Gallery
Various Polaroid camera models are shown in the exhibition, such as the 100, which came out in 1963.Deborah Douglas.
Courtesy: MIT Museum;
Cambridge
Joan Fontcuberta is one of the Spanish photographers present at the exhibition.
In the image, 'Agave Ferox', from 1988. Fontcuberta took the photo of this plant and then rubbed the paper against it.
Joan Fontcuberta
'The Perfect Dive' (1962), which captures the moment when 14-year-old Kathy Flicker enters the water during a practice in the Dillon Gymnasium pool, on the Princeton University campus.George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock / Courtesy: The Polaroid Collection
Wooden prototype of a Polaroid model from the late 1950s.MICHAEL CARDINALI / MIT MUSEUM
'Untitled' (1998).TIMOTHY WHITE / THE POLAROID COLLECTION
'Mick Jagger Jacket Cover, Madison Square Garden', 1972 / 2003. 'Polaroid' image that Peter Beard later retouched.Peter Beard;
VEGAP;
A Coruña;
2023 / Courtesy: Peter and Nejma Beard
Polaroid Big Shot camera from the early 1970s.
Andy Warhol popularized this model, with which he took dozens of images in preparation for the painted portraits of him. Michael Cardinali.
Courtesy: MIT Museum;
Cambridge
'Blacked Out Polaroid Sign, Corporate Headquarters, Waltham MA 2011'.
Composite image gallery of the company's sign, which had been spray-painted black, at its Massachusetts headquarters.SB Walker / Courtesy: Janet Borden;
inc.
Heather Graham actress, pictured in 1987.GUS VAN SANT
Famous portrait that the photographer Oliviero Toscani took of Andy Warhol in 1974. Oliviero Toscani / Courtesy: Oliviero Toscani Studio
Other examples of this freedom to experiment are a montage made in strips of different copies, titled
Panorama
, by the sculptor Lucas Samaras, or the set of 117 small prints by Barbara Crane in red and black tones, like a
collage
, from 1984.
Long before, the debut of the Polaroid had been on Thanksgiving Day (late November) 1948, in a shopping center in Boston.
The managers thought that with Christmas close they could do well.
The 56 cameras for sale sold out within hours.
The boom
had begun
.
In 1957 they got the first color snapshots.
'Mick Jagger Jacket Cover, Madison Square Garden', 1972 / 2003. One of the photographs from the Polaroid exhibition at the Barrié Foundation, in A Coruña.Peter Beard;
VEGAP;
A Coruña;
2023 / Courtesy: Peter and Nejma Beard
The possibilities of good publicity also helped them.
Who could resist the charm of Ali MacGraw with a Polaroid strap dangling from his wrist?
Four million were sold in two years.
A child could use it, it was the great democratization of photography.
The wake reached the Moon.
A photo (not taken with Polaroid) from the exhibit shows a patch of lunar soil showing a plastic-wrapped
Polaroid
.
It was left there by NASA astronaut Charles Duke in 1972. It was a portrait of him with his family.
In October of that year, Life
magazine
dedicated its cover to him: "A genius and his magic camera."
Land was seen shooting
a group of excited children with a
pole .
The speed, comfort and quality of the images turned this machine into an instrument for, for example, renewing the still life genre, as can be seen in the delicate compositions of the master André Kertész.
In one, there is a flower with the stem seen through the glass of an upside-down glass.
Others took his imagination further, such as Peter Beard, who manipulated prints of him by writing and painting on them, even using his own blood as a pigment.
'Untitled' (1998), one of the photographs belonging to the collection brought together by the Polaroid company. TIMOTHY WHITE / THE POLAROID COLLECTION
On another wall hangs a spectacular triptych by the Spaniard Javier Vallhonrat, who was helped by Polaroid to deepen "into a philosophy of the image as construction, as opposed to documentation," he says by phone.
He used a huge camera provided by the company.
“It moved in some lanes and the film gave a fascinating materiality, it introduced some distortions that interested me.
Actually, you didn't touch anything, an employee came from outside to whom you gave instructions.”
Of the Polaroid phenomenon, he recalls: "A current was created in the US and other countries that placed photography in a hybrid world, close to theatrical intervention or other genres, to break the borders that existed."
Then there's the case of Chuck Clake, who used that big machine for portraits, like he did Hillary Clinton.
It was another favorite genre for the Polaroid, as can be seen in the one taken by the publicity photographer Oliviero Toscani in 1974 of Warhol while he was holding a Polaroid from which another portrait of him emerged.
Pure game.
The cinema was also a test track.
There are the small
polaroids
of Philippe Halsman to promote
Hitchcock's
The Birds , who appears in one of them surrounded by birds;
in another, the protagonist, Tippi Hedren, poses in profile almost hidden by a bird that spreads its wings next to her.
The first commercially available Polaroid camera, the Model 95, from 1948. Deborah Douglas / MIT Museum, Cambridge
However, the irruption of digital photography killed Polaroid, and that had won a million-dollar lawsuit against Kodak for some patents.
In the 1990s, sales began to fall, then layoffs and losses arrived... until the suspension of payments in 2001. At that time, the collection of photos of artists sponsored by the company "exceeded 16,000", Hitchcock points out.
Luckily for Land, he did not see the collapse, he had passed away 10 years before.
The brand endured a few years in the hands of another group, but in 2006 it stopped manufacturing the machines.
The tragedy for the fans came in February 2008, when the production of the film was suspended.
The end of this colorful tale is represented by an image from the tour: it's the Polaroid poster of its corporate headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, which someone had spray-painted black when it closed.
That sign was converted in 2011 into a series of
polaroids
by SB Walker.
"It breaks my heart to see this," confessed the commissioner.
A world unknown to the new generations, like the teenager who, while looking at an exhibition window, wondered: “And did the photo come out of this so tiny?”
'October 24, 1981', by André Kertész. Estate of André Kertész / Courtesy: Stephen Bulger Gallery
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