For this reader one of the most interesting details of the Steve Jobs biography (highly recommended) was that Jobs’ most important heroes was Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera. With the ubiquity of digital cameras, many as part of our phones, and the images we take shared on social media sites instantly totaling in the trillions,, it’s easy to forget the time and effort that used to be involved capturing images. But the Polaroid, with its easy to use interface – point and shoot, and instantaneous (well, 60 seconds of wait time, but still..), was a revolution.
Slate has a gallery of images tracking the rise and fall of Polaroid.
And in the stacks:
Insisting on the impossible : the life of Edwin Land / Victor K. McElheny – TR540.L36 M36 1998
Polaroid book : selections from the Polaroid Collections of photography / edited by Steve Crist ; essay by Barbara Hitchcock- TR654 .P65 2005
Polaroids / Helmut Newton – TR679 .N49 2011
Guy Bourdin : Polaroids – TR647 .B67 2009
Instant light : Tarkovsky polaroids / edited by Giovanni Chiaramonte – TR655 .T37 2006
Polaroids : Mapplethorpe / Sylvia Wolf – TR647.M365 W65 2007