{"id":3450,"date":"2010-06-01T20:58:11","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T00:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=3450"},"modified":"2010-06-01T20:58:11","modified_gmt":"2010-06-02T00:58:11","slug":"polaroid-collection-update-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2010\/06\/01\/polaroid-collection-update-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Polaroid Collection: Update 19"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week, Sotheby’s issued the catalogue of the pending June 21-22 auction of works from the Polaroid Collection. I’ve yet to see a copy, but I’m told it’s a substantial, indeed hefty, publication \u2015 which is only to be expected, given that auction house’s usual scholarly thoroughness in preparing such documentation for its sales.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I advise purchasing a copy, as it becomes automatically a significant contribution to the literature describing this collection. I’ve put in my own order, and will report on it once it arrives.<\/p>\n

Sight unseen, it occurs to me that Sotheby’s detailed account of each of the 1260 images its representatives selected from the 16,000 works in the collection constitutes a database of information about those works \u2014 and most probably exists in database form. I also assume that the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Elys\u00e9e in\u00a0Lausanne, Switzerland, which has housed some 4600 works from the collection since the early 1990s, catalogued their Polaroid holdings in some database format.<\/p>\n

The Maison Europ\u00e9enne de la Photographie in Paris had a deposit of 1500 works from the collection from circa 1990 through 2004, presumably also catalogued in a database. And while the original Polaroid Corporation and the various successive possessors of the Collection never did a thorough cataloguing thereof, there has been at least some partial cataloguing generated over the decades.<\/p>\n

In short, it seems likely that approximately half the total collection, if not more, has been documented and catalogued in several scattered databases. Fortunately, this includes everything scheduled for the auction later this month, and thus subject to imminent dispersal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I propose that the creation of a virtual version of the Polaroid Collection, in the form of a comprehensive annotated database of its contents placed online, should become a priority as we move inexorably toward some disposition of the collection that will certainly include sales of individual pieces (the auction), as well as sales or donations of chunks of the remainder to one or more institutions. This should start with the gathering together of existing databases and other annotated records cataloguing portions of the collection or its entirety.<\/p>\n

From the standpoint of the collection’s significance to the history of photography and our understanding of visual culture in the second half of the twentieth century, the production and availability of such a resource would go along way to making up for the dispersal of its analog contents. The existence of such a database would at least make scholarly and critical reference to the collection’s contents possible, regardless of how the actual works get distributed.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Today (June 1) I was interviewed at my home by Anne Kathrin Th\u00fcringer, a cultural journalist with the German television station NDR Fernsehen<\/a>, toward a forthcoming feature on the Polaroid Collection. At the end of the session, Anne Kathrin made several SX-70s of me on my terrace, so that they could make a video of the image of me emerging in one of them. They’ve done this with each of their interview subjects for this piece.<\/p>\n

It’s been so long since anyone’s done that (or since I’ve done it) that I’d forgotten the pleasure of working with this technology, watching that image come up before your eyes. Still magic. For this\u00a0Anne Kathrin used “original” SX-70 film that she’d acquired from someone’s dwindling supply, and left me with several variant portraits that they didn’t video. Probably the last SX-70s that’ll get made of me on that vintage material.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

I have posted some newly received documents on the page of this blog where I gather such information<\/a>. These include a Minnesota Bankruptcy Court order signed by Judge Gregory Kishel, approving the Trustee\u2019s employment as of September 1, 2009 of Barbara Hitchcock<\/a> to assist with the disposition of the collection. This means that, as of that date if not before, the Trustee had access to someone with two decades\u2019 direct knowledge of the contractual terms on which the collection was constructed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Innovation\/Imagination, traveling exhibition catalogue (Abrams, 1999)<\/p><\/div>\n

In the process of updating this page, I re-read segments of the 2001-02 bankruptcy proceedings in which “Old Polaroid” got dismantled. While doing so, I discovered that while the Polaroid Corporation provided the court with no inventory or estimate of value for the collection, it did break it down to broad groupings, as follows (see Schedule B<\/a>):<\/p>\n