Edwin Land: The enigmatic and monomaniacal inventor of Polaroid
A new documentary titled “Mr. Polaroid,” portrays Edwin Land (1909-1991) as a towering, brilliant, yet obsessive figure. According to Land’s biographer Ron Firestein, he was a role model for Steve Jobs, as his technology company “created products people didn’t even know they wanted.”
Yet, there were those who needed these innovations but couldn’t access them. Take polarised headlights, for instance. They could leverage the capabilities of Land’s groundbreaking film to reduce glare from oncoming vehicles, potentially saving lives. However, the cost was more than auto manufacturers were willing to bear.
Land initially conceived the technology to combat headlight glare, a hazard he became aware of after a near-fatal car accident in his youth. The concept for the Polaroid camera was born in 1944 when his 3-year-old daughter wondered why they had to wait to see the photos he was taking. Within an hour, he had envisioned the components necessary for an instant camera. “It was a brilliant idea,” author Christopher Bonanos chuckles in the documentary, “that remains unfinished even 80 years later.”
Land’s products were in a constant state of evolution, not just in terms of the size and shape of the cameras, but also in the near-miraculous process by which he eliminated negatives, darkrooms, photographic emulsions, and time.
The term “visionary” is often used loosely in today’s world. But watching Land in a clip from half a century ago, describing his vision for the future of cameras – a pocket-sized gadget as user-friendly as a pen or pencil – feels like witnessing a man predict the future. He believed that instant photography and the Polaroid camera, which debuted in 1948, would benefit humanity in ways that never came to fruition. Land was a complex individual, with his lofty aspirations often overshadowed by his obsessive tendencies.
“Mr. Polaroid” has an underlying tragic note. Land was rarely seen smiling in photographs – his quest for perfection outweighed his desire for success and recognition. Stagnation was his nemesis. His products were always evolving, not only in the size and shape of the cameras but also in the almost miraculous process by which he eliminated negatives, darkrooms, photographic emulsions, and time.
Land – also known as Dr. Land, despite never completing his undergraduate studies, managed to recruit some of the most renowned photographers of his era, including Ansel Adams, William Wegman, Dorothea Lang and Andy Warhol. He offered them free film and studio space in exchange for contributing images to his company’s collection. This resulted in a collection of over 16,000 Polaroid prints from 120 renowned photographers, including 443 photographs by Adams.
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Land, who left Harvard after a single semester to focus on his inventions, was awarded more than 500 patents during his lifetime. The documentary portrays him as one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of American business. According to Caroline Hunter, a former Polaroid chemist, Land addressed his employees the morning after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, announcing the tragic news and pledging to increase the number of black employees at Polaroid, a promise he fulfilled.
His products found a wide range of uses, “from pornography to dentistry and everything in between,” as photographer and author Rhiannon Adam puts it. He also contributed to the development of the U-2 spy plane and served as a consultant to the CIA on Cold War surveillance systems.
However, when it was revealed by Hunter and other colleagues that Polaroid’s ID technology was being used by South Africa’s apartheid government – in defiance of a UN-sponsored boycott – it sparked considerable backlash from workers, leading to protests and work stoppages.
Land’s anger towards the protesters was not due to the substance of their protest, but because they were “hindering his personal objectives”. As frequently mentioned in the documentary, Land was not one to let anything stand in his way – not social awkwardness, moral constraints or international diplomacy. Was this specific technology purely photographic or a means of monitoring black miners? The answer remains unclear. What is crystal clear, much like a well-captured Polaroid, is that Edwin Land was a loner and a monomaniac. But this didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.
MR. POLAROID | Trailer | AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | PBS
As reported by The Wall Street Journal
