Land entered Harvard in the fall of 1926 but, impatient to find an efficient means of manufacturing his idea, he left after just a few months.
He believed it possible to reduce the glare, however, by introducing a polarizing effect. Land believed that vehicle headlights needed to be stronger but knew that stronger headlights blinded oncoming drivers. It happened when an automobile he was riding in nearly hit a wagon at night. It was while at camp that he first grasped the idea of polarization. Land’s patent for Polarizing Refracting Bodies, filed April 26, 1929Īs a boy Edwin Land became fascinated with kaleidoscopes and the properties of light. He also advised Polaroid to hire more artists to act as consultants and advised the company to start an art collection, which he helped to grow.ĭocumenting the extent of Adams’s longstanding relationship with Polaroid, the collection also traces major developments in photography, art, and technology in the years following World War II and into the Cold War era.Detail from Edwin H. The bulk of Adams’s correspondence, especially in the 1950s and 60s, was with Land and Meroë Morse, who studied art history with Land’s colleague and friend Clarence Kennedy at Smith College and rose to become manager of the Black and White Research Lab at Polaroid.ĭuring the course of his consultancy, Adams tested every major camera and film Polaroid produced, from the early Model 95 to the color SX-70. Beyond his contributions to the technology, Adams acted as a spokesperson for Polaroid, encouraging his artist colleagues to try Polaroid products. He developed a practice of taking sequences of test photographs of the same subject or view with slight variations, such as in the aperture setting, developing time, or use of a filter, recording all of these details on the test photograph as well as in the letters. Along with the photos, Adams sent memos in which he recorded exposure details about the test photographs and a description of their subject matter along with additional commentary.
#Edwin land contribution to photography series
This initial meeting led to a relationship that lasted up until Adams’s death in 1984. Baker Library Special Collection holds the nearly forty-year correspondence between Ansel Adams and the Polaroid Corporation, including Adam’s memoranda and test photographs in the Polaroid Corporation records, series IV: Photographs and correspondence of Polaroid consultant photographer Ansel Adams.Īs Polaroid sent products to his studio in Carmel, California, Adams systematically tested the films and cameras and sent stacks of test photographs back to headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He believed that the company needed to include practicing photographers in their research and development process. Impressed by Land’s work on photographic technologies, especially his vision for a “one step” camera - in which the traditional labor of darkroom photography would be done inside the camera itself - Adams proposed that he test Polaroid products. This collection includes the test photographs and memos he created working with Polaroid Corporation, the 20th century electronics company known for its pioneering photographic technologies.Īdams’s relationship with Polaroid began when he met the company’s founder Edwin Land in 1948. Polaroid Corporation records, Series IV: photographs and correspondence of Polaroid consultant photographer Ansel Adams, Baker Library, Harvard Business Schoolīest known for his sweeping panoramas of the Western United States, photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) also had a thriving career as a corporate consultant.
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