The following is an excerpt from the new photobook, Polaroid Now, The History and Future of Polaroid Photography, by Steven Crist, with contributions from Polaroid CEO, Oskar Smolokowski. This essay, titled “Polaroid Then and Now,” is by Oskar. Explore the beautifully curated pages, featuring some of the most famous photographers in history, and most exciting new voices in Polaroid photography today.
Words by Oskar Smolokoswki.
Polaroid is one of the few companies in the world that can truly say it invented magic.
I discovered this magic for myself in 2011, in a store hidden away in a fifth-floor loft in lower Manhattan. Walking around the beautiful space with huge Polaroid photo enlargements covering the walls, and the legendary SX70 in my hands for the first time, I could immediately feel the significance of what was on display—even though I knew nearly nothing about it back then. I was twenty-two and completely unaware that my life was about to change forever. My journey to ensure a future, and fight for these incredible products and this incredible brand was about to start. There are many books and articles written about the history of Polaroid and its legendary founder Edwin Land, and my short introduction is not meant to be a match for them. Instead, I’d love to share the parts of the story that captured the hearts and minds of myself and our new team at Polaroid: the reason we continue to work hard at Polaroid now, eighty-three years after the company was founded.
The first thing that jumped out at me when I learned about Polaroid’s history was Edwin Land’s incredible drive and curiosity. He was relentless in his pursuit of answering questions and inventing ways the world could be better. He would often sleep in his lab to keep working on projects that were “manifestly important and nearly impossible,” as he himself put it. Polaroid was founded on this insatiable curiosity. The technical inventions that came out were then turned into products that were useful, magical, and most of the time extremely profitable. Throughout Land’s life, his curiosity never faltered. He never stopped exploring new ideas and meticulously patenting all of them, which resulted in 535 patents to his name!
Land’s first big breakthrough invention was the thin sheet polarizer: a core technology that is used to this very day in LCD screens, sunglasses, and countless other applications. This is where the name Polaroid comes from and the invention’s commercialization is what the company was focused on in its first years after its founding in 1937. It would be more than ten years later until Polaroid would first bring the idea of instant photography to the world.
The story of how Polaroid got into the business of inventing instant photography goes more or less like this: In 1943, after a day out walking around and taking pictures on a Rolleiflex camera with her dad, Land’s three-year-old daughter simply asked,