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Polaroid for life
Some history. On 21 February 1947, Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid Corporation, demonstrated instant photography to the Optical Society of America. The first commercially-available instant camera, the Polaroid Land Camera Model 95, was in the shops before Christmas of the following year. The first films were sepia-tone; black-and-white Polaroid film was introduced in 1950, but colour film didn't appear until 1963. Since then, Polaroid has slowly honed its range of popular instant cameras. In 1977, the OneStep Land Camera was a huge hit, and for four years was the biggest-selling camera of any type in the world. Throughout the 1990s, Polaroid have made 600 series cameras which have varied in outward appearance very slightly, but have a similar basic design and always cost £25 from Argos, regardless of economic conditions. See also new Polaroid innovations below. Throughout its history, Polaroid has given resources to photographer-artists in exchange for feedback about its products. The first of these, landscape photographer Ansel Adams, was hired by Edwin Land as a consultant in 1948. In his autobiography, Adams recalled that Land was "convinced that images can be as effective as words, and that every person has a latent ability to make effective contact with another through visual statements" (1985: 297). Since each polaroid picture is unique, people over the years have taken to experimenting with their photographs, manipulating the 'canvas' with chemicals, extreme heat and light, pointy objects, drugs, etc. The 'artist's studio' part of the Polaroid website tells you about some of this. There is also a nice book, Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography (Abrams, 1999), for interested people to gaze at. Web-minded people can always scan their polaroids, so that they can be digitally manipulated, put on the Web, or whatever. If you don't have a scanner yourself, libraries, colleges and community centres have them, or reprographics shops will charge you an annoying but relatively small amount of money for scanning. The cost of a non-crummy digital camera is about £300. The cost of a Polaroid camera plus a scanner is about £100, and you can use the scanner for lots of other things too. And you have nice Polaroids to put on your wall. New polaroid innovations In 1998, Polaroid introduced a cheapish disposable camera, which you use once and then send back to Polaroid for recycling. In keeping with the trash-oriented theme, though, I fear that the idea itself is rubbish -- you might as well have a cheapish reusable camera.
Polaroids February 2000
Nine daffodil
polaroids
Polaroids September 99
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And
happily in 1999, they introduced the Polaroid JoyCam which is £14.99 for
the camera and £5.99 for a film (10 photographs). I got one the other day
and it's very nice -- lighter and easier to carry round than its chunky brothers,
and although the photos aren't square, they're good, especially for portraits
outdoors.
