{"id":761,"date":"2009-07-21T18:23:11","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T22:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=761"},"modified":"2009-07-21T18:23:11","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T22:23:11","slug":"polaroid-artist-support-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2009\/07\/21\/polaroid-artist-support-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"Polaroid: Artist Support Programs, Adieu?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My post about the limbo status of the Polaroid Collections<\/a> \u2014\u00a0comprised of somewhere between 16,000 and 22,000 photographs made with Polaroid materials \u2014\u00a0has evoked from several people memories (mostly fond) of the support Polaroid provided over the years to artists, photographers, and photo instructors. Whatever new shape the company takes when it emerges from its current legal crisis, it seems likely that, even if renewed, this form of patronage will get trimmed back severely.<\/p>\n

\"The

The Polaroid Land Camera model J66<\/p><\/div>\n

Some followers of this blog, including subscriber and regular commenter John Reuter<\/a>, have started to send me informative reminiscences of the company’s Artist Support Programs<\/a> and their own participation in one or another of these. So I’ve decided to open up a separate discussion thread on this subject, which in this blog will run parallel to the above-mentioned one concerning the future of the Collections and another on\u00a0the discontinuance\/revival of various Polaroid processes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Others who know much more about the evolution of these programs have told the story before me, better and more knowedgeably. So I’ll just synopsize here. In 1948, the year the original Polaroid Land camera went on the market, Dr. Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid, hired Ansel Adams as a consultant, charged with testing the original Polaroid black & white system and commenting thereon. Adams responded voluminously, forging a lifelong bond with Land and Polaroid, with the result that the collection now includes some 600 works by him.<\/p>\n

The programs grew exponentially from there. As an observer of the national and international photo scenes since 1967, I can safely say that no major manufacturer of photographic tools and materials demonstrated more open-handedness \u2014\u00a0or even-handedness \u2014\u00a0\u00a0in supplying its products to artists, photographers, and photo teachers (not just post-secondary but K-12 also), in large and sometimes endless quantities. Initially this meant mostly giving away film and donating or lending cameras, but it came to include gifting studio time with the 20×24 and 40×80 cameras, tech support for production in those spaces, and often some amount of free materials as well.<\/p>\n

\"SX-70<\/a>

SX-70 Model 2 with film cartridge protruding from the front<\/p><\/div>\n

The Polaroid Collections grew out of these support programs, with artists often donating examples of their successful results to the collections as quid pro quo. (This was never a requirement with the smaller materials and cameras, though from what I understand it became an expectation with the work done in the 20×24 and 40×80 studios under Polaroid subsidy.) But Polaroid often bought Polaroid work for the collections; I’ve heard of at least one case in which the corporation bought out an entire exhibition.<\/p>\n

As a result, Land and the people appointed by Polaroid to run the support programs (Jon Holmes and Eelco Wolf among them) \u2014\u00a0along with those who managed the studio spaces for the large-format cameras, plus those who curated the related collections \u2014\u00a0encouraged and enabled several generations of picture-makers to devote serious time to exploration of the possibilities inherent in the various Polaroid systems. Robert Delford Brown produced an exhibition and book of “First-Class Portraits” by deliberately committing every possible mistake with the black & white film.\u00a0Lucas Samaras built a large body of “Autopolaroids” around the original black & white and color films, went on to experiment with the malleable emulsion of the SX-70 films, and investigated the other formats as well. Les Krims generated a controversial series of “Fictcryptkrimsographs” exploiting the same manipulability of the SX-70 emulsion. Joyce Neimanas began quilting clusters of SX-70s into large multi-images pieces (which is where David Hockney got the idea for his SX-70 “cubist” works). William Wegman produced the entire corpus of what Robert Frank calls his “dumb dog photographs” with the 20×24. David Levinthal works with the 20×24 almost exclusively for his color still lifes of vernacular figurines and other items of material culture. Ellen Carey evolved her abstract “Pulls” series from the physicality of the materials themselves. Just a few random examples of the impact of Polaroid’s support policies on the medium as a whole.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

One of a Kind: Recent Polaroid Color Photography. by Belinda Rathbone (1979)<\/p><\/div>\n

Not all the results of this corporate sponsorship proved successful; not everyone who got involved had a positive experience. I’ve heard substantial gripes from a few people I consider credible if not impartial witnesses. I raised some questions of my own in a 1980 essay titled “Polaroid: Toward A Dangerous Future,”<\/a> which I’m posting here. It began its life as a review of the book <\/em>One of a Kind: Recent Polaroid Color Photography<\/a><\/em>, edited by Belinda Rathbone and published by David R. Godine in 1979. The editor of Polaroid’s in-house magazine Close-Up<\/em>, which the corporation also distributed free to educators and others, commissioned that review and didn’t ask me to soften my critique. I doubt that any other photo manufacturer would have granted me that much editorial freedom. (In 1998 I reconsidered this essay; I’ve posted the outcome here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Polaroid

Polaroid 20x24 studio<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite my own cavils, and those of some others, I have to say that, not just on the whole but overwhelmingly, the artists and photographers and teachers who could take advantage of the program’s assorted offerings reported favorably on the experience, and rarely if ever received equivalent support from any other sector of the photo industry. That constitutes quite an achievement, for which Polaroid deserves compliments. I think the time has come to start developing the oral history of that policy’s consequences.<\/p>\n

I’m opening this as a discussion space for those who were involved in those programs, either as recipients of this beneficence \u00a0or as facilitators of Polaroid’s generosity, as well as for anyone else with something useful to contribute.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

For an index of links to all posts related to this story,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an observer of the national and international photo scenes since 1967, I can safely say that no major manufacturer of photographic tools and materials demonstrated more open-handedness \u2014 or even-handedness \u2014 than the Polaroid Corporation in supplying its products to artists, photographers, and photo teachers (not just post-secondary but K-12 also), in large and sometimes endless quantities. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,126,429,430],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-artist-support-programs","tag-corporate-sponsorship","tag-polaroid","tag-polaroid-collection","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}