Polaroid (4)

American photo manufacturer best known for Polaroid instant film cameras, established in 1937 and initially based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following the global success as one of the world's most prominent photographic brands, with over 21,000 employees by 1978 and annual revenue exceeding $3 billion in 1991, the original Polaroid Corporation suffered dramatic market loss throughout the 1990s, ending in October 2001 bankruptcy. After several ownership changes, Polaroid is now operated by Dutch company Polaroid B.V., marketed in the United States via a Polaroid America Corp subsidiary. Polaroid was founded by Russian-American scientist and inventor Edwin H. Land (1909—1991) to market his patented "instant film" polarizing polymer technology. Throughout the 1970s and to the late-80s, Polaroid instant cameras made a fundamental, lasting impact on contemporary visual culture. With affordable and convenient Polaroid cameras, photography became accessible to the broadest-ever audience, including children and low-income communities. On the other hand, many groundbreaking American photographers and visual artists legitimized "polaroids" in the context of established contemporary art: Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, William Wegman, Lucas Samaras, Walker Evans, David Hockney, Christopher Makos, Maripol, Nobuyoshi Araki, Keith Haring, Chuck Close, Peter Beard (2), Ellen Carey (2), Dawoud Bey, Ryan McGinley, Marie Cosindas, David Levinthal and Mark Morrisroe. Soviet-Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932—1986), who got a Polaroid camera as a gift from Michelangelo Antonioni, produced a series of critically-acclaimed "polaroids" between 1979 and 84. (They were subsequently published as Instant Light, Tarkovsky Polaroids (2006) album, co-edited by Italian photographer Giovanni Chiaramonte and Tarkovsky's second son, Andrey A. Tarkovsky.) The company's decline began in the early-1980s, following a failed attempt to enter a home video market and a hostile internal takeover, which pushed Edwin Land off the Board of Directors, forcing him to resign in 1981. The rapid advancement of "1-hour" color film processing and cheap disposable film cameras further undermined Polaroid's market dominance; massive layoffs ensued, and multiple factories were closed. In 1996, Polaroid launched PDC-2000, its first digital camera, which failed to gain any substantial market share. Polaroid's attempts to market digital 35-mm film scanners in the late 1990s were equally fruitless, with Nikon and Minolta dominating the niche. In October 2001, the Polaroid Corporation filed for federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy, selling its trademark and most liquid assets to Bank One's investment division, One Equity Partners. The "Polaroid" brand changed ownership several times; in 2008, a newly-established corporation, The Impossible Project, acquired the last factory producing Polaroid film cartridges in the Netherlands and Polaroid's intellectual property. In 2017, the Impossible Project's largest shareholder, Polish investor Wiaczesław "Slava" Smołokowski, bought out the enterprise, rebranding it as Polaroid Originals. In March 2020, the company reinstated the Polaroid brand.