Board_Advisors_etc 3..5

After Land’s departure, Polaroid Corporation
continued to flourish in the early 1980s. By 1983,
the company had reached over 13,000 employees,
$1.3 billion in sales, and more than 1,000 patents. A
decade long legal battle with competitor Eastman
Kodak was resolved in Polaroid’s favor in 1986
when a Federal appeals court upheld its decision
that Eastman Kodak violated Polaroid patent
rights in the manufacture of its instant cameras
and film. That same year, the Spectra System cam-
era was introduced at Jordan Marsh department
store in Boston, 38 years after the first instant Land
camera was announced. Polaroid Corporation cele-
brated its 50th anniversary in 1987 and Edwin H.
Land died in 1991, at the age of 82.
As technology manufacturing seriously declined
in the United States in the early 1990s, and with the
new challenge of digital photography, Polaroid
Corporation has also suffered financial setbacks.
Although digital camera sales made Polaroid the
number one digital camera seller in the United
States in the late 1990s and introduction of the I-
zone, JoyCam, and PopShots cameras and films

was successful, Polaroid Corporation filed for

Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring in October

2001. On 31 July 2002 One Equity Partners pur-
      chased Polaroid Corporation, creating a new com-
      pany that now operates under the Polaroid
      Corporation name, thereby launching a new era
      for Polaroid and the legacy of instant imaging.
      StaceyMcCarroll

Seealso:Adams, Ansel; Burson, Nancy; Camera: An

Overview; Camera: Instant or Polaroid; Digital

Photography; Eastman Kodak Company; Hahn,

Betty; Instant Photography; Levinthal, David; Life

Magazine; Mulas, Ugo; Newton, Helmut; Pfahl,

John; Print Processes; Sudek, Josef; Turbeville,

Deborah; Vernacular Photography; Wegman, William

Further Reading

Adams, Ansel.Polaroid Land Photography. Boston: New

York Graphic Society, 1963.

Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography.

New York: Abrams, 1999.

Patrick Nagatani and Andree Tracey, Alamogordo Blues, 1986, Polaroid 2024 ER land
print (diptych). Original in color.
[Courtesy the Polaroid Collections. Reproduced with permission of the artists]

POLAROID CORPORATION