How Polaroid changed seeing in the 1970s

In the 1970s, Polaroid cameras used self-developing film to make a chemically developed print soon after a picture was taken, building on the company's pioneering consumer-friendly cameras and film. What can instant photography help us understand about how people see? The lessons consider how it changed seeing through photography's uses and creative possibilities.

3 articles, 1 book · about 25 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   POLAROID: THE INSTANT ICON - By Maya Singer - News - Nahmad Contemporary · nahmadcontemporary.com · 7 min read

   Edwin Land's instant camera, introduced in 1948, brought a footloose and fancy-free spirit to photography by jamming an entire darkroom into the camera itself. Early Polaroid models partially developed film internally by bursting pods of chemical goo.

2. Read
   

   How the Polaroid Stormed the Photographic World · Smithsonian Magazine · 3 min read

   Polaroid provided cameras and film to artists, photographers and celebrities, including Ansel Adams, Walker Evans and Walter Cronkite. At lunch, photographer Richard Avedon snapped pictures with the SX-70, and blank squares emerged from the camera.

3. Read
   

   the cultural impact of the polaroid camera in the 1970s · Wikipedia · 15 min read

   Artists used three main techniques to modify or distort Polaroid images: SX-70 manipulation, emulsion lift, and image transfer. With SX-70 Time Zero film, photographers could draw on or distort an image by applying pressure while it developed.

4. Book
   Instant: The Story of Polaroid · Bookshop.org

   Instant by Christopher Bonanos describes Polaroid's rise in popularity and adoption by artists such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close, then its decline into bankruptcy in the late '90s and resurrection in the digital age.

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