wartime efforts during the early 1940s, the direction
of the company would dramatically change when in
1944 Land first conceived of the one-step photo-
graphic system while vacationing with his family in
New Mexico. On 26 November 1948, the first Land
camera—the Model 95—was sold in Boston at the
Jordan Marsh department store for $89.50. This
model was the prototype for all Polaroid Land
cameras produced for the next 15 years.
Photographic sales of the Land Model 95 camera
exceeded $5 million in the first year. In 1949, Land
hired photographer Ansel Adams as a film consul-
tant, initiating a long tradition of working with and
supporting photographic artists. Polaroid sales
exceed $23 million in the early 1950s, and over
4,000 dealers in the United States alone sold Polaroid
cameras, films, and accessories. During the mid-
1950s, the company invested its advertising budget
on network television programs, as Polaroid products
were now distributed in over 45 countries worldwide.
For the next several decades, Polaroid would
continue to create and produce revolutionary
photographic products for broad personal and pro-
fessional uses, penetrating virtually every aspect of
the photographic market. Always a technology-dri-
ven company at heart, Polaroid’s research and
development ventures aimed to offer the best ima-
ging technology available in both consumer and
commercial markets. Commercial products ac-
counted for the bulk of the company’s sales, as
Polaroid developed products for application in
business, medicine, science, industry, and the mili-
tary. In 1961, for example, Polaroid introduced its
Positive/Negative 4 5-inch film Type 55. De-
signed for professional photographers, it was the
first black and white film to produce both a positive
print and a negative in 20 seconds. Polaroid devel-
oped Polacolor in 1963, as instant color film was
invented. In 1965, Polaroid sales surged with the
manufacture of the inexpensive Swinger camera, a
$20 camera that took wallet-sized black and white
photographs. And in 1972 the Polaroid SX-70 Land
Camera, the first automatic, motorized, folding,
single-lens reflex camera that makes self-developing
instant color prints, was introduced. Classic film
star Sir Lawrence Olivier served as an advertising
spokesman for the camera, andLifemagazine fea-
tured the camera and Land on its cover.
The far-reaching uses of the SX-70 system for
personal photography have been well established,
but professional photographers were also excited
by the magic of instant imaging. For artists caught
up in a wave of experimentation in the 1970s, par-
ticularly driven by a keen interest in the possibili-
ties of color photography, Polaroid became
synonymous with cutting-edge photographic tech-
nology. The simplicity as well as the thrill of instan-
taneous photographic results captivated both
artists and novice photographers alike. From the
beginning Polaroid Corporation had encouraged
artists to experiment with their medium, as Edwin
Land fostered a relationship between artists and
scientists, believing that the artists’ point of view
offered a valuable alternative to that of the com-
pany’s technical staff. Land put Ansel Adams on
staff as a film consultant in 1948, and grew the
artist/consultant staff over the years. In the late
1960s the company developed an outreach pro-
gram that provided photographers with small film
and equipment grants in exchange for images pre-
sented to the permanent collection. As a result, a
unique corporate collection began to emerge, and
Polaroid generated an impressive collection of
photographic artwork—artwork that now com-
prises the over 23,000-item Polaroid Collection.
Some of the more prominent names represented
include David Bailey, Dawoud Bey, Chuck Close,
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, David Hockney,
Sarah Moon, Helmut Newton, Josef Sudek, and
Rosamond Purcell. Beginning in the 1970s, exhibi-
tions were occasionally organized using the collec-
tion as a basis. And as an adjunct to their
collecting, the corporation set up a photography
prize in 2000.
The diversity of photographs housed in the
Polaroid Collection illustrates how artists and
photographers have embraced Land’s version of
photographic magic. It also represents the range
of films and formats developed by the company
over the decades. Polaroid amplified its technolo-
gical scope in the mid-1970s, with the development
of the 2024-inch and 4080-inch instant cam-
eras designed to produce high quality art reproduc-
tions for museums. These cameras incorporate
already existing Polaroid films. Land was awarded
his 500th patent in 1977. That same year, the One-
Step Land camera was introduced and advertised
in a series of successful television and print ads
featuring popular actors Mariette Hartley and
James Garner. This inexpensive fixed-focus camera
became the best-selling camera in the United
States, instant or conventional. In the late 1970s,
Polaroid released Time Zero, a faster-developing
film, to replace its popular SX-70 film. The com-
pany released Polaroid Sun 600 System cameras
and Type 600 color film in the early 1980s. After
leading the company for over four decades, Edwin
H. Land retired as CEO of Polaroid Corporation
in 1980, becoming Consulting Director of Basic
Research in Land Photography.POLAROID CORPORATION