When Polaroid was king: Edwin Land surveys his Boston-area empire

How about a photo printer that talks to your cel phone?

More info.

I think back to my youth and I just wish cameras were as accessible as they are today. id have some really great pictures.

There was a lot of parking around Tech Square in 1970.

Curious if they had been re-purposed or demolished. Structures of this scale don't appear identifiable on Google maps. Quite a time. I treasure my SX-70 Land Camera, even in its non-working condition.

He was a staff photographer and reported directly to Land for his first few years at Polaroid Corporation. Later on, Land hired him as a product line manager and he worked out of the company's headquarters at 575 Technology Square in Cambridge. His team developed (no pun intended) Polaroid's professional chrome, which was one of its few non-instant films, its instant 35mm slide film, and on some of the Corporation's more obscure lines (IE the 60, 80, 400, 600, and EE100 series) as well as its large format professional films (which were mainly used by professional portrait photographers for things like test shots) and instant negatives (which were both large format and 35mm). Because of that, when we were kids, my siblings and I had no shortage of obscure cameras and film to play with, and I think we were used as test subjects. In the early 1970s he was assigned to work with Ansel Adams to help develop some of its professional lines, and worked with him on a Polaroid sponsored project to document much of the Museum of Fine Arts' inventory on film in preparation for the Museum's 100th anniversary. Also, my father went out to Carmel, Yosemite, Owens Valley, and Death Valley with Ansel several times for workshops and photo treks. In addition to his professional relationship, they became good friends and my parents even hosted him for dinner a few times, whenever he was in town. He last spoke to Ansel about a week before he died. My father worked there from about 1966 until Polaroid's demise around 2001. He worked for the successor company, also called Polaroid, for a few years before retiring. In the video, the campus where Land boards the helicopter was its campus in Waltham, on the shores of the Cambridge Reservoir. As Land mentions in the film, it was designed by I.M. Pei to blend in with the countryside and, more importantly, not crest the treetops so that it was not visible from across the reservoir. According to my father, its design was a source of pride for Land and the company. Sadly, it the campus was redeveloped about 10 or 15 years ago and its redevelopment wasn't so sensitive.

Don't know if others saw this, but Elsa Dorfman uses a 20x24 Polaroid camera to do her portraits. Actually, I should say "used" because she is retiring.