A number of major contemporary artists' most enduring images - William Wegman's Weimaraner dogs dressed as humans, Robert Mapplethorpe's male nudes, Lucas Samaras' "phototransformations" and work by Andre Kertesz, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Elsa Dorfman and Mike Slack - have employed the process of Polaroid. There are Polaroids in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Pompidou in Paris.
But now that the company has announced that it will discontinue production of its film, this genre has come to an end, ironically just as Polaroids, along with photography in general, have been skyrocketing in popularity among collectors. For amateurs as well as professionals, Polaroids, long before the digital age, offered the then-unique thrill of instant gratification, providing the ability to see an image emerge in a matter of seconds. Some of these everyday pictures are on their way to becoming collectible, just as snapshots and photo booth pictures and other vernacular photographs are.
The Polaroid Corp. was founded in 1937 by scientist and inventor Dr. Edwin Land, who first invented Polaroid sunglasses (the name came from the synthetic polarizing filter Land developed) and 3-D photography, and would eventually be granted more patents than any other American except Thomas Edison. His one-step, self-developing photographic process - the first instant camera to have integral film - launched in 1948 was a giant technological breakthrough. (The story goes that Land was inspired by his 3-year-old daughter's impatience about having to wait to see a photograph that he had just taken of her when they were on vacation in 1944.)
He collaborated with top industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss to produce the Automatic 100 Land Camera, followed by such models as the Polaroid Swinger, the Polaroid X-70, which used an entirely dry, light-activated process to produce instant color pictures and collapsed to fit into a jacket pocket, and the Polaroid One-Step model of 1977, which was the world's best-selling camera of its time. It's interesting that Land early on interacted with and wooed the artistic community, hiring noted photographer Ansel Adams as a consultant in 1948.
Polaroid prints and cameras will inevitably increase in collectibility, both for the works of known artists and the humbler anonymous examples. At this writing, an authenticated Andy Warhol shot of a Mick Jagger birthday cake topped by a bodacious torso is listed on eBay for a "buy-it-now" price of $5,200. Collectors of advertiques might be interested in Polaroid's star-studded campaigns, featuring such celebrities as Laurence Olivier, Vincent Price and Kermit the Frog, and there is also some ephemera like a trading card depicting Dr. Land peeling the cover off an instant image. Most vintage cameras are not worth much more than $20; more expensive are the models numbered from the 180s to 195s, which can run to several hundred dollars.
Reflecting the increasing status of Polaroids with dealers and collectors, is a recent book, "Andre Kertesz: The Polaroids" (W.W. Norton & Co.), published in conjunction with four gallery shows. The 80 vivid color images included, taken with a new Polaroid SX-70 (a gift from musician-photographer Graham Nash), were the final works of the influential Hungarian-born photographer.
Depressed and exhausted following the death of his wife, he found a new, energizing inspiration in this simple, square format, often shooting from the window of his Greenwich Village apartment overlooking Washington Square Park or focusing on the mundane objects inside it, as well as a few penetrating portraits. An informative introduction by Robert Gurbo, curator of the Kertesz estate, chronicles the artist's career and how the Polaroid format took his oeuvre full circle, echoing the scale of his earliest works taken in Budapest and Paris.
Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 18 books, including "Cool Names for Babies" and "The Baby Name Bible" (St. Martin's Press; www.babynamebible.com). She cannot answer letters personally.
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