dion-plate Dubroni camera system, where the
plate was both exposed and developed in the wa-
tertight interior chamber of the camera. In the
twentieth century, technologies like the photo-
booth (patented in 1925) and the more recent
digital camera allow the photographer or subject
to view the photograph shortly or immediately
after it is taken, but since these processes rely on
a separate printing process (albeit in the case of
the photobooth, one contained within the me-
chanism) they resist classification as ‘‘instant
photography.’’ True instant photography, then,
originated with the innovations of scientist and
Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land, and its basic
principles are best articulated in his own words. In
his 1947 article ‘‘A New One-step Photographic
Process,’’ Land described the goal of instant
photography as essentially:
...a camera and a photographic process that would pro-
duce a finished positive print, directly from the camera,
immediately after exposure. From the point of view of
the user, the camera was to look essentially like an
ordinary camera, the process was to be dry, the film
was to be loaded in one of the usual ways, the positive
print was to look essentially like a conventional paper
print, and the print was to be completed within a minute
or two after the picture was taken
(Land 1947, 61)Land’s first instant camera, the Model 95 Polaroid
Land Camera, went on sale in 1948 and was techno-
logically revolutionary on a number of levels. The
collapsible camera was at once sturdy, relatively com-
pact, and large enough to accommodate 3¼4¼
films. The camera was designed to house two rolls—
one of photosensitive film and the other of positive
paper—which were pressed together as the film was
extracted from the mechanism protecting the devel-
oping and printing emulsions. But the real innovation
of Land’s ‘‘one-step photography’’ system was the
film’s entirely contained self-processing system. As
the exposed Land film was pulled from the camera,
it was pressed between a pair of steel rollers. The
rollers ruptured a ‘‘reagent pod’’ of developing che-
micals and spread them between the negative and
positive layers. The viscous chemical mixture initiated
a diffusion transfer process (developing both negative
and positive images simultaneously) and stabilized
the image. In less than one minute the negative
layer could be peeled away and discarded leaving a
richly detailed finished positive print.
Despite some minor alterations in its early years
(a shift from sepia to more professional looking
black and white films and improvements in the
print stabilization process) the Land Camera was
an unmitigated success with professionals and
amateurs alike. Given the ability to view the fin-
ished photograph and the photographic subject
side by side, Land saw his one-step system as not
only an entertaining approach to snapshooting but
also a way to take better photographs, putting the
power of aesthetic production in the hands of the
everyday consumer. Thus while Land was ever
focused on making his instant cameras as mechani-
cally streamlined and operationally foolproof as
possible, he was also consistently concerned with
instant photography as an artistic medium. Just
one year after the Model 95 was introduced to the
public Land met landscape photographer Ansel
Adams and promptly hired him to work for Polar-
oid as a consultant. Adams was instrumental in
the development and marketing of Land films, spe-
cifically with professional photographers in mind.
In his lifelong collaboration with Polaroid, Adams
used his Land Camera and the larger format 4 5
Polapan Land films he helped to inspire to create
masterfully detailed and composed black and white
landscapes of the American southwest, and penned
thePolaroid Land Photography Manual(1963). In
the foreword to this text, however, Adams diverges
somewhat from Land’s democratic vision of the
citizen-artist by stressing the distinction between
the Land Camera’s popularity as a gadget for
everyday photographers and its sophistication in
the hands of the skilled professional to whom the
book was addressed. In the mid-to-late century,
however, professional photographers’ main use of
the instant process was as a proofing method to
determine proper exposure of studio set-ups.
A restless innovator, Land continued to tinker
with the one-step process, making the film speed
and the development process faster and the films
more stable. In 1963, Polaroid introduced Polaco-
lor instant color films, and in 1972, Land achieved
another major breakthrough with what he termed
‘‘absolute one-step photography’’ embodied in the
revolutionary Polaroid SX-70 camera. Designed
specifically with everyday snapshot photographers
in mind, Land saw the SX-70 as a solution to all of
the ‘‘problems’’ of the Land Camera and thus rein-
vented virtually every aspect of extant instant
photographic technology. Far more compact than
earlier models, the SX-70, when collapsed, was
designed to fit snugly into a man’s coat pocket.
The camera was also fully automatic, motorized
(no pulling to extract the film was required), and
employed a radical new ‘‘garbage free’’ film tech-
nology for which no timing, peeling, or coating of
the film was required. The negative and positive
layers of each frame of film were contained in aINSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY