- Bonanos, Christopher.
Instant.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.
ISBN 978-1-61689-085-8.
-
The second half of the twentieth century in the developed
world was, in many ways, the age of immediate gratification,
and no invention was as iconic of the epoch as the
Polaroid instant photograph. No longer did people
have to wait until a roll of film was full, take it to the
drug store to be sent off to a photo lab, and then, a week or
so later, see whether the irreplaceable pictures of their
child's first birthday came out or were forever lost. With
the introduction of Edwin Land's first Polaroid camera in
1948, only a minute elapsed between the click of the shutter
and peeling off a completely developed black and white (well,
initially, sepia and white, but that was fixed within two years)
print. If the picture wasn't satisfactory, another shot could
be taken on the spot, and pictures of special events could
be immediately shared with others present—in a way, the
Polaroid print was the original visual social medium: Flickr
in the Fifties.
This book chronicles the history of Polaroid, which is inseparable
from the life of its exceptional founder, CEO, and
technological visionary, Edwin Land. Land, like other, more
recent founders of technological empires, was a college drop-out
(the tedium simply repelled him), whose instinct drove him to
create products which other, more sensible, people considered
impossible, for markets which did not exist, fulfilling needs
which future customers did not remotely perceive they had,
and then continuing to dazzle them with ever more amazing
achievements. Polaroid in its heyday was the descendent of
Thomas Edison's Menlo Park invention factory and the ancestor
of Apple under Steve Jobs—a place where crazy, world-transforming
ideas bubbled up and were groomed into products with a huge
profit margin.
Although his technical knowledge was both broad and deep, and he
spent most of his life in the laboratory or supervising research
and product development, Edwin Land was anything but a nerd: he
was deeply versed in the fine arts and literature, and assembled
a large collection of photography (both instant and conventional)
along with his 535 patents. He cultivated relationships with
artists ranging from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol and involved them
in the design and evolution of Polaroid's products. Land considered
basic research part of Polaroid's mission, and viewed his work
on human colour perception as his most important achievement: he
told a reporter in 1959, “Photography…that is
something I do for a living.”
Although Polaroid produced a wide (indeed, almost bewildering)
variety of cameras and film which progressed from peel-off
monochrome to professional large-format positive/negative
sheets to colour to all-in-one colour film packs for the
SX-70
and its successors, which miraculously developed in
broad daylight after being spit out by the camera, it remained,
to a large extent, a one product company—entirely
identified with instant photography. And, it was not only a
one product company (something with which this scrivener has
some acquaintance), but a one genius company, where
the entire technical direction and product strategy resided
in the braincase of a single individual. This has its risks,
and when the stock was flying high there was no shortage of
sceptical analysts on Wall Street who pointed them out.
And then slowly, painfully, it all fell back to Earth. In 1977,
Land's long-time dream of instant motion pictures was launched
on the market as
Polavision.
The company had expended years and on the order of half a billion
dollars in developing a system which produced three minute silent
movies which were grainy and murky. This was launched just
at the time video cassette recorders were coming onto the market,
which could record and replay full television programs with sound,
using inexpensive tapes which could be re-recorded. Polavision
sales were dismal, and the product was discontinued two years later.
In 1976, Kodak launched their own instant camera line, which cut
into Polaroid's sales and set off a patent litigation battle which
would last more than fourteen years and cause Polaroid to focus on
the past and defending its market share rather than innovation.
Now that everybody has instant photography in the form of digital
cameras and mobile telephones, all without the need of miracle
chemistry, breakthrough optics, or costly film packs, you might
conclude that Polaroid, like Kodak, was done in by digital. The
reality is somewhat more complicated. What undermined Polaroid's
business model was not digital photography, which emerged only after
the company was already steep in decline, but the advent of the one hour
minilab and
inexpensive, highly automated, and small point-and-shoot
35 mm cameras. When the choice was between waiting a week
or so for your pictures or seeing them right away, Polaroid had an
edge, but when you could shoot a roll of film, drop it at the
minilab in the mall when you went to do your shopping, and
pick up the prints before you went home, the distinction wasn't
so great. Further, the quality of prints from 35 mm film
on photographic paper was dramatically better; the prints were
larger; and you could order additional copies or enlargements
from the negatives. Large, heavy, and clunky cameras that
only took 10 pictures from an expensive film pack began to look
decreasingly attractive compared to pocketable 35 mm
cameras that, at least for the snapshot market, nailed focus and
exposure almost every time you pushed the button.
The story of Polaroid is also one of how a company can be trapped by
its business model. Polaroid's laboratories produced one of the first
prototypes of a digital camera. But management wasn't interested
because everybody knew that revenue came from selling film, not
cameras, and a digital camera didn't use film. At the same time,
Polaroid was working on a pioneering inkjet photo printer, which
management disdained because it didn't produce output they
considered of photographic quality. Imagine how things might have been
different had somebody said, “Look, it's not as good as a
photographic print—yet—but it's good enough for
most of our snapshot customers, and we can replace our film revenue
with sales of ink and branded paper.” But nobody said that. The
Polaroid microelectronics laboratory was closed in 1993, with the
assets sold to MIT and the inkjet project was terminated—those
working on it went off to found the premier large-format inkjet
company.
In addition to the meticulously documented history, there is a
tremendous amount of wisdom regarding how companies and technologies
succeed and fail. In addition, this is a gorgeous book, with
numerous colour illustrations (expandable and scrollable in the
Kindle edition). My only quibble is that
in the Kindle edition, the index is just a list of terms, not linked
to references in the text; everything else is properly linked.
Special thanks to James Lileks for
recommending
this book
(part 2).
October 2012 