Ayn Rand with her husband, Frank O'Connor, in their apartment on East 34th Street in New York, 1964.
No, really. Ayn Rand (selfishness enthusiast, anti- collectivist, Alan Greenspan mentor) thought Edwin Land (defender of PBS, coiner of the phrase “the bottom line is in heaven”) was as great as they come.
In a 1963 magazine article called “The Money-Making Personality,” Rand proposed a distinction between people who were real creators of money from “money appropriators,” the people who merely shuffled cash around and earned a slice of the proceeds. She essentially throws in her lot with the builders and creators of things, particularly if they’re scientists: She cites George Westinghouse, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Arthur Vining Davis (who built Alcoa), as well as a few others. And, as you’ve guessed, our man Land. Money quote, literally:
“The Money Maker is able to defy established customs, to stand alone against storms of criticism and predictions of failure. . . . He lives, thinks and acts long range. Having complete confidence in his own judgment, he has complete confidence in the future, and only long-range projects can hold his interest. To him work is not a painful duty or necessary evil but a way of life; to him, productive activity is the essence of, the meaning and the enjoyment of existence; it is the state of being alive. . . .
Quoting another writer, she compares Land to Edison and Westinghouse, and goes on to cite one of Land’s colleagues, who claims that a hundred Ph.D.s would have taken ten years to pull off what Land did in six months. (She gets a bunch of her facts somewhat wrong, but the broad points of her analysis are okay.) I’m no Randian, heaven knows, but she’s absolutely right about one thing: Making something that the world genuinely needs and/or loves is a far more enriching thing to be doing than selling derivatives is.
That said, she does not mention that Land’s company got its footing doing war work—government-funded, tax-revenue-requiring war work, which effectively subsidized the development of the instant camera. Just saying.
And by the way? The essay ran in Cosmopolitan, which was quite a different magazine before Helen Gurley Brown turned it into Orgasm Monthly.
And even weirder? Rand did a reading of this story on the radio, and you can hear it, in her own Russian-inflected voice, here. It’s fun to hear her say “the Pol-a-rrrroid Cor-poration.”
On a gray morning about two weeks ago, Seventh Avenue and 14th Street.
Instant coffee. Har. (Click to enlarge.)
Shot with a Polaroid Model 180 camera on FP-100C film, fortified with a cortado.
I’ve often thought, while working on this book, that there ought to be a Polaroid documentary. Turns out that Grant Hamilton, an Iowa City photographer and Pola-enthusiast, thought the same thing. His film focuses on the last year of Polaroid’s film production and the creation of the Impossible Project. Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film (perfect name!) is finished and seeking a distributor, and may be viewable as soon as this fall; I’ll post news as I get it. The trailer is here.
The posters (downloadable here):
And here’s a sampling of Hamilton’s photos, which turn the square SX-70 format into a little color-field painting. Full gallery here.
Advertisement, 1889.
In the heap of broken glass that is the Kodak bankruptcy, here’s one particularly sharp shard: Kodak is getting out of the camera-making business, which it entered in 1888.
It’s not a surprise; even back in the glory days, Kodak (and Polaroid too) made most of their money on film, and cameras were secondary. Moreover, Kodak was rarely in the first tier of camera manufacturers. Most of its products were snapshot instruments, some better than others. (Remember the disc camera? Tiny negatives, all grain once they were enlarged.) But still: there were exceptions, and you can still use them.
The Kodak Reflex, 1946-1949. Photo courtesy of Mr. Martin's Web Site.
For example, the Kodak Reflex, from the 1940s, can keep up with a Rolleiflex, and it’s much cheaper on eBay.
Jiffy Six-20, ca. 1935. Photo via historiccamera.com.
And this one is nothing special, but I have to mention it: The Kodak Jiffy Six-20, circa 1935. It was, I think, the first camera ever owned by anyone in my family—my Papou bought it around the time my grandparents married—and I still have it. I like being able to photograph my mother with the same lens that produced pictures of her as a small child.
Yes, there was a 24-karat-gold-plated SX-70.
It's shiny.
A little silly, but if you’re into Polaroid, completely within bounds; this is a cult object, and cults like their icons precious. (I wouldn’t put it past Apple to produce a platinum iPad someday, either.) The Land List calls it a “(very) limited edition,” though how limited I don’t know.
They show up on eBay once in awhile, and draw premium prices. One buyer’s story here. Another owner shows off his camera on YouTube here.
Polaroid tried it again when the Spectra line came around in the eighties. Cartier edition, with gold and a sapphire on top, here.
It's even shinier.
Four were made. Somehow this seems even sillier to me, because that camera wasn’t even meant to be metal-plated, and its internals weren’t: gemstones against gray plastic is just weird. But it’s nice that someone cared.
Photo by Elsa Dorfman.
Elsa Dorfman is a Cambridge photographer who works almost exclusively with the 20×24, and has done so since 1980. She does a steady business taking quirky family portraits, as well a variety of other work (here’s a gallery of her many portraits of Allen Ginsberg). Lots on her Website here, including a film where she describes her process, and a great big feature on her work on Wired’s site today.
The story broadly hints that the 20×24 camera’s days are numbered, which I suspect isn’t as likely as it sounds here. When the film and paper stock begins to run out, I’m pretty confident that John Reuter (who runs the 20×24 Studio), along with Dorfman and the rest of this tiny crowd of enthusiasts, will figure out a way to get more made. Yes, it’ll cost a fortune, but nobody wants to see those cameras go dark for good.
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