Guest Post 1: Tom Millea on Polaroid

(From time to time, if someone sends me a lengthy comment that I consider worthy of the attention of this blog’s readers, I’ll turn that into a Guest Post. Here’s the first of those: Tom Millea’s account of 15 years’ worth of support from Polaroid, coming not through the Collections, the Artist Support Programs, or the Education Program, but from the technical department. — A. D. Coleman)

Polaroid, Polapan, Platinum, and Me

Tom Millea, "Niffer writing," 1990

This story is about the little guy. I was one of the first artists to re-introduce the platinum process back in the very early 1970s. That alone is a great story, but not this one. This one is about how Polaroid allowed me for fifteen years to be an artist and to work without having to buckle under to demands from people who had no idea what I was doing and wanted only for me to get in line and do what everyone else was doing.

After ten or more years fighting the battle of having the platinum print accepted into the mainstream of photography, I was ready to do something new for myself. When I first started making these prints I learned quickly that people had no idea how to even look at them as photographs, let alone value them in any way. People had seen only glossy silver prints for the last sixty years so the matte surface and long tones of the platinum print caused much confusion in the viewer. In fact, most people did not think they were photographs.

After ten long years of fighting to have platinum images shown with other mainstream photographs and to have them valued in their own right, public appreciation began to change and the images were accepted — it seemed overnight! It was again time to do something for myself.

Tom Millea, "Kerry," 1993

I found the limitations of a large view camera to make the large negatives for a platinum print stifling to me, and I wanted more mobility and flexibility to express what I was seeing and feeling. I wanted to use a hand camera, preferably a 35mm camera, so I could move around and get away from the tripod. Leaving all that rigidity behind.

Therein lay the problem. A platinum print required a negative the same size as the final print. The 35mm negative and print was much too small, even for me. I needed some way to enlarge the 35mm negative and still have good results in order to make a great print.

The problem was the negative. With a 35mm negative it was necessary to put that negative into the enlarger and then project it onto a sheet of film and make a positive. Then you took the positive and enlarged it to make another negative which you could then print in platinum. Wow! So much work. And the result was unacceptable, because each time you made another generation of negative you lost quality. You lost a great deal of quality. The negative became less sharp and the gray tones dropped out of the film and you were left with an grainy, unsharp final image.

The very nature of a platinum print is one of a long scale, multi-gray print, cherished for its long tonal scale and beauty. I needed a way to cut down the inter-negative loss of quality and keep all the beauty of the print.

Polaroid Polapan 35mm slide film

Along comes Polaroid with its Polapan 35mm roll film, which created a slide, or a positive, in the camera; you developed it yourself in a little machine they made available. If I used Polaroid in the camera, I could cut out a full generation of inter-negative making, and it would still allow a print having all the qualities I was looking for in my platinum prints.

In those days I was one of the people working on the fringes of the photo world. I was not a superstar doing work that was published everywhere or teaching at one of the major universities. Just a guy working quietly in Carmel — printing negatives I had made after living alone in Death Valley for two years, trying to produce something others would respond to.

I knew no one at Polaroid and had no idea how to contact anyone. So I just called up on the phone and asked to talk to the photo-technical people. I explained my idea and told them that this process might open the door for many photographers who wanted to work in platinum and also needed to use a 35mm camera. I asked if they would send me a few rolls of the film and allow me to experiment with it. I guess the idea made enough sense to them to give me a try. I used it and it worked perfectly. The final negative was many times better than any duplicate negative I had made before.

Tom Millea, from "The Book of Endings," 1995

But there was another problem. The people who were making platinum prints at the time were scandalized that anyone would taint or poison this sacred process by using a small camera in the first place, and most people rejected the idea.

I continued working. I continued talking with the technicians at Polaroid. Every month or so the guys in the lab would slip me some rolls of film without anyone knowing, and I would continue to work.

At one point I traveled back to Boston and met up with the people from the Polaroid Photography collection and they were shocked by what I was doing. Shocked in a good way. They actually bought a number of prints for the collection and I went home happy. But I didn’t get any sponsorship, so the guys in the labs just kept shipping me film.

This went on for fifteen years. I tried everything I knew how to do to get people to use it for platinum printing, but photographers still thought it was sacrilege to use a small camera to make a platinum print.

After ten years of doing this, the people in the main office began to see its usefulness and worked with me to make digital Iris prints from their film, but it was too late. The moment had passed, and the industry was moving rapidly in another direction. I continued using the film until they stopped making it in the middle 1990s.

I am sure that many of these same photographers would just love to have that film now. I was forced to replace Polapan with another film when, along with so many other films in the middle 1990s, it was discontinued. But I have a huge body of work based on Polapan film. Many of my most famous images were made with that film.

Tom Millea, "Yosemite swimmer," 1989

If I had not had the support of the lab people at Polaroid I never would have been able to work as a fine-art photographer. I simply did not make enough money to work without that support. I remember dancing with joy when a package of film arrived in the mail. Sometimes they would send me a case of it at the end of the year when they had extra.

These were not the heads of the art sections or the big advertising gurus who were in any way helping me. These were the guys in the labs who liked what I was doing and decided to support someone who was working at the edge of possibility using their material to do that. Without them — without their continued help — I could not have been the artist I am: It is as simple and as profound as that.

Tom Millea by Bob Carroll, 2005

The entire middle of my career was made possible by their help and I will be eternally grateful to them because there was no reason for them to do it — there was no large payback in advertising or celebrity status. It was people honoring a working artist and allowing that artist to work — that simple and that beautiful also.

It is time for others to know what they did for me as this work becomes more highly prized in the field. They believed in me when others would not even talk to me — when others thought my ideas and images went against everything Platinum Photography was about. Now it turns out I was right. Simple!!

So how do I thank them? One way is by writing this letter. Another way is by affirming that there are several thousand beautiful platinum and now digital prints out in the world that would not have been possible without their help. I thank each and every person at Polaroid who helped a little guy when he really needed it.

— Tom Millea

Carmel, California

Text copyright © 2009 by Tom Millea. All rights reserved. Published by permission of the author. Tom Millea photographs copyright © by Tom Millea. Bob Carroll photograph copyright © 2005 by Bob Carroll. All rights reserved. Published by permission of Tom Millea and Bob Carroll.

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