Instant: A Cultural History of Polaroid

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		Instant: A Cultural History of Polaroid
		Instant: A Cultural History of Polaroid

Polaroid, in its time, was what Apple is to ours: the most interesting high tech company on earth. It filled a niche all its own, one that nobody else intruded upon until the very end, and nearly all its brilliance came from the head of its genius founder, a man names Edwin Herbert Land. There are four stories in here: the invention of a one of a kind technology, the creation of a medium that many artists embraced and loved, the story of a pop culture artifact that virtually everyone recognizes and a cautionary business tale about high tech companies that lose their inventive edge. This book tells the remarkable history of Polaroid, which became hugely successful soon after it brought the first instant print camera to market in 1948. Over the next six decades, Polaroid cameras became utterly familiar and they became more functional and more elegant with each new camera model. With the rise of digital cameras, however, the company went bankrupt and in 2008 announced that Polaroid pictures were a thing of the past. A few months later a group of enthusiasts founded the Impossible Project, dedicated to bring back Polaroid film, which returned the product to the market by mid 2010.

网友对Instant: A Cultural History of Polaroid的评论

不错，就是内容不多。。

My father was an engineer in the model shops at Polaroid--he started in 1943 and retired in 1980--and worked often with Dr. Land. Much of the story in this book was dinner-table conversation at our house. Christopher Bonanos gets the story of those years right, particularly the personality traits of Edwin Land, and tells it in a very readable way.

In the years after 1980, I paid less attention to the company (except when the corporate takeover goons took away my mother's pension and health benefits) and the book brought me up to date nicely. I think the recent parts of the story are missing from the other books about Polaroid.

Recommended.

As an instant film and Polaroid enthusiast, I was pretty pumped about getting this book. I was even more delighted when it showed up though. It's fun to read, I knocked the whole thing down on a long day of travel, and I couldn't have been happier with it. It's a great story of the inner workings of a company and a man who had an impossible idea that he made real through with little more than genius and determination.

The book also offers many full-color photo reproductions and impressive illustrations. Whoever art-directed the book gets a high-five from me. It's beautiful.

Folks who like to read about Steve Jobs and crazy CEO-types need to get on the Edwin Land bus. That guy was the OG super controlling genius boss.

This nicely put together book is a great (and quick) read about the origins of Polaroid, and having been published in 2012, probably the most up-to-date account of it's history. It also has a great bibliography for further reading on both Polaroid and its founder Edwin Land.

My biggest disappointment is this: the photos of Polaroid products and their packaging--or rather, the lack thereof.

The author tells us how important the design aesthetic was at Polaroid but includes only about SEVEN pics of cameras out of the entire line of products & packaging! Products are mentioned, but never shown, such as the large format cameras, we get one head-on view of the Polavision movie camera, no shots of the later models or the brightly colored packaging that was their signature. (I guess I'll have to pick up Paul Giambarba's "The Branding of Polaroid" for that). The majority of photos are samples of the artistic use of Polaroids (nice, but a bit repetitive) and too many shots of celebrities (few of which were of any interest to me). I would rather have seen more pics of the great minds behind Polaroid's innovations--especially since in terms of their hiring practices, they were ahead of their time, and many of those scientific minds belonged to women. Lets' see who these people were! I found myself constantly turning to the internet (and the author's blog) to find photos & more info about the the subjects in the book.

This book is good enough for the publisher to revisit the layout: considering the careful thought that went in to the dust jacket, colors, etc. of this hardcover edition, I would love to see them print a larger softback edition with more photos of the items & people which are actually the subject matter of the text--I think they'd have a real winner on their hands.

Looking for an addictive and breezy little non-fiction book that you can polish off on a round trip plane flight? "Instant" is your ticket. This slim little volume covering the history of one of the most recognizable names in corporate America--and purveyors of one of the world's most memorable products--is written in a friendly, conversational style that really pulled me along.

Everyone except the very youngest among us fondly remember the pre-digital thrill of snapping a photo and seeing the results just seconds later. In a time when amateur photographers dropped their film cassette off at the nearest Foto Hut and waited a week for the prints to come back from the lab, Polaroid's instant print was rather magical.

Steve Jobs has often been compared to the father of instant film and co-founder of Polaroid, Edwin Land. They shared the common trait of being passionate visionaries who built a cult-like following of true believers who wanted to work for them. They ran companies that certainly wanted to make money, but that were first and foremost dedicated to the dream of their magical product. Both men were unshakable in their own self-confidence and their unwavering belief in the righteousness of their cause. Land, a fascinating character who has already inspired books covering his life in detail, gets less attention in "Instant" than one might want, but the nature of this book is to be brief. If you're interested in following up for more, you certainly have that option elsewhere.

Part biography of Edwin Land and part company history, "Instant" also reviews the technical challenges of creating a self-contained, portable photo developing system, highlighting both its successes and notable shortcomings. (Various early incarnations of instant prints curled, discolored or required the application of an inconvenient liquid fixitive following printing.) It was a full twenty years after the debut of instant black-and-white Polaroid film that the familiar color prints with their large, white bottom border appeared in the early 70s.

"Instant" also covers a little-known aspect of the Polaroid story: the small band of artists who were some of the product's biggest fans. (Did you know that none other than visual perfectionist Ansel Adams had a decades-long association with Polaroid?) Other prominent big names who were advocates of Polaroid film included Chuck Close and Andy Worhol, among others. This is perhaps one of the more surprising aspects of the story. Polaroid was often regarded by connoisseurs as a synonym for inferior photographs meant strictly for the amateur who didn't mind things like soft focus or less than accurate color saturation. But Polaroid produced a number of other far lesser-known instant-film products dedicated to professional applications. In fact, they produced super large format studio cameras capable of delivering superior quality prints that could compete with the finest equipment.

Alas, despite the successes of Polaroid and its visionary leader who gave the world a magical product, it became a victim of its devotion to the very product that inspired it. The tragedy of Polaroid is that it was generally well positioned to take advantage of the digital revolution but it failed--for a complex number of reasons--to do so. For those of us who remember the joy of watching photos resolve into existence from the gray-green haze of a Polaroid frame, the final chapters of "Instant" leave us with a wistful feeling.

I read "Instant" in an instant...at least it felt that way. The book is a very enjoyable introduction and overview of the history of Polaroid and Edwin Land. However, after recently reading such excellent historical books like "The Idea Factory/Bell Labs" by Jon Gertner or "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, "Instant" feels like it has the depth of an extended magazine article. I was particularly hoping for far more depth regarding Edwin Land himself. And it seems like that information is readily available, if the author had chosen to include it: The book makes several repeated references to older, out-of-print biographical books about Land, which unfortunately makes me feel like I should have just read those, instead.

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