According to World Radio Switzerland, the Polaroid Collection material lodged for the past two decades at the Musée de L’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland — some 4577 pieces — is included in the current inventory of 16,000 works encompassing the announced total size of the collection.
In a short piece, “Photo collection could be sold in an instant,” datelined February 26, 2010, Helen Murray writes:
“A collection of Polaroid photos which has been housed at Musée de L’Elysée in Lausanne for 20 years is at risk being sold due to the financial problems of the American-owned company famous for the instant photo. Polaroid’s collapse in 2008 has led directors to consider selling 16,000 images from its collection. Amongst them are 4,500 original works from the European collection, which were entrusted to Lausanne’s dedicated photography museum in 1990. Eighty-eight of the most valuable images have already been earmarked for auction. . . . The museum will put on a special exhibition in March to highlight the Polaroid collection.” (Emphasis added.)
You’ll find the museum’s announcement of this exhibition — titled “Polaroid in Peril!” — at the website of the Musée de l’Elysée. The show will run From March 3 through June 6, 2010. Scheduled alongside a Sally Mann retrospective, it will mark the end of curator William Ewing’s stint at the Musée; he’s retiring after this. The announcement reads, in part:
“The Polaroid collection rapidly grew, and today there are more or less 16,000 works, of which 4,500 are housed in the Musée de l’Elysée. They remain, however, property of the PBC Corporation, which took possession of the entire collection after the bankruptcy of the original Polaroid Corporation (bankruptcy twice, in 2001 and 2008). . . . As of March 1st, it is not known if the entire collection will be sold, or merely parts of it, but it is the firm intention of the current owners to sell it if they can. This is seen as a tragedy in the photography world, as dispersion would mean the loss of a unique archive, and indeed, a fascinating chapter in the history of photography. However, there is [sic] Polaroid ‘fans’ working to save the collection, and there remains a slim chance that the collection at the Musée de l’Elysée will remain here. Let us hope so.”
Two problems with this report from World Radio Switzerland.
- I have so far been unable to verify that the current official inventory of the full collection (just under 16,000 pieces) does in fact include the almost 4600 works in Lausanne. Indeed, I have no information on the creation of that inventory, save that it’s one of the documents submitted to the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court in 2009. Murray does not source that assertion.
- I have reason to believe that all of the 1260 works in the pending June 2010 auction came from what was housed in Somerville, MA, as of spring 2009. The names on the list (see Schedule I here, starting at page 11) are almost without exception American or U.S.-based photographers and artists; I can’t find anywhere near 88 pieces there by European-based picture-makers, or Americans known for working extensively in Europe. Moreover, per Sotheby’s recent press release concerning the auction, all those works slated to go under the hammer currently reside in Sotheby’s New York facility, with cataloguing underway. Thus it seems highly unlikely that, as Murray claims, “Eighty-eight of the most valuable images [in the Lausanne museum’s holdings] have already been earmarked for auction.”
I will try to obtain an explanation for that assertion, and will continue to pursue the question of who created the overall inventory list that now defines the collection’s size — as well as the question of whether the works from the Polaroid Collection currently held by the Musée de l’Elysée (ca. 4600 pieces) and those formerly held by the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris (ca. 1500 pieces) got folded into the inventory of the total collection currently in use by the collection’s owners and the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court. If they stand outside that inventory, they would (mostly) explain the difference between the collection’s previously much-trumpeted scope (22-24,000 works) and its recent, substantially diminished scale of a mere 16,000 works. So the mystery persists: Where are the missing 8,000 works from the Polaroid Collection?
Note: The works just mentioned entered the collections of the two respective European institutions, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris, in the early ’90s, around the time the original Polaroid Corporation closed down its European division. Polaroid simultaneously terminated development of its European Collection, which had evolved under the guidance of Manfred Heiting as a complement to the U.S. Collection.
The works from the European Collection were placed with these two institutions on the basis of what both institutions understood as “permanent loan” — meaning that they expected them to remain within their holdings in perpetuity and eventually become accessioned as donations. This is reflected in the MEP’s listing of these works as part of its “Permanent Collection,” which explains, “Major donations have also augmented the collection, for example from Dai Nippon Printing (Tokyo) and the Reader’s Digest Foundation. The Polaroid Company [sic] of Boston has placed 1500 original Polaroid prints in trust of the centre.” (This statement remains online as of this writing, although the MEP has reportedly returned all those Polaroid works to the present holders of the collection, who apparently canceled the deal in preparation for the auction.) The Musée de l’Elysée continues to list its Polaroid Collection holdings as “Collection Polaroid Internationale (dépôt). Sujets : Nature morte, nu, paysage, portrait. Nombre de phototypes : 4577 positifs.”
Neither institution purchased the works deposited with them by Polaroid. Nor did Polaroid do so with the proviso that the institutions then needed to go find funds with which to acquire them. This adds to the accumulating evidence that, in the ’90s, Polaroid sought to find appropriate repositories for chunks of the collections as donations.
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Polaroid PIC-1000
A plant in Bedford, Mass., that once produced Polaroid film is up and running again — cranking out “extremely thin flexible solar panels.” (So their output’s still light-related, if that’s a consolation, and definitely green-positive.) See Sarah Dowdey’s January 7 report.
Meanwhile, the Polaroid One-Step stands poised to make a comeback. Renamed the PIC-1000, its new incarnations were premiered by PLR IP Holdings, LLC, owners of the Polaroid brand, at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2010) in Las Vegas, January 7-10, at the same time that Lady Gaga got named Creative Director. For further details, and a look at more models, click here.
Supposedly it will use the new version of SX-70 film now in production from The Impossible Project in Enschede, The Netherlands. Urban Outfitters, the clothing store, partnered with TEP to sell the last remaining stock of vintage SX-70s and OEM film packs; seems likely that they, or the Gap, or someone else will jump on the new cameras. But the One-Step isn’t exactly the SX-70.
According to a January 10, 2010 press release from the manufacturer, this imminently forthcoming film will also work in older versions of the SX-70: “The PIC 1000 will be available in a range of fun colors and use classic Polaroid Color 600 Instant Film to produce the brand’s classic white border instant pictures. The Polaroid Color 600 Instant Film will work with both classic and new Polaroid cameras and will be offered in packs of 10 pictures. The new classic PIC 1000 camera and instant color film will be available at national retailers in 2010.” So don’t dump your SX-70s just yet; indeed, you might just want to snap them up (and other Polaroid cameras that use this film pack) when you see them in thrift shops and yard sales.
Apparently a substantial youthful cohort of self-designated hipsters has clamored for this — bless their retro-oriented little hearts. Everything old is new again.
For current news of progress on production of that film, and a discussion of the presently somewhat stressed relationship between The Impossible Project and what I’ll call New Polaroid, see “Picture This: The Impossible Project That Kept Polaroid Film Alive” by Sarah Gilbert (at AOL’s DailyFinance site), posted March 2, 2010.
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Speaking of which: The current holders of the Polaroid Collection — the legal entity that intends to auction or otherwise sell it off — has no connection to the Polaroid Corporation that created the collection in the first place. So “Polaroid” is not selling its collection; that chore has fallen to a court-appointed trustee, John R. Stoebner, who has the legal responsibility of seeing that the creditors of the Petters International Ponzi scheme get as many pennies on the dollar as he can obtain for them.
Tom Petters mug shot, October 2008
That massive scam included the now-defunct entity that, as part of the Petters empire, produced Polaroid-branded products between 2005-08 after buying out the holding company established after the original Polaroid Corporation went bankrupt. That entity was called Petters Group Worldwide, or PGW; during that brief period, it also owned the Polaroid Collection.
The company now manufacturing products under the Polaroid brand name, PLR IP Holdings, LLC, is two bankruptcies and at least two legal entities distant from the Polaroid Corporation. Aside from owning Polaroid’s brand name and IP (patents, technology, etc.), and calling their digital and (forthcoming) analog cameras and other products Polaroid, they also have no connection to the original Polaroid Corporation, nor to the Polaroid Collection.
All of these entities (including the court-appointed trustee) get referred to in the press, generically, as “Polaroid.” Mea culpa; I’ve made this error myself at times, especially in earlier posts. Adding to this, some writers and others use the term “Old Polaroid” to refer to either the original Polaroid Corporation or the subsequent holding company or the Petters entity. Totally confusing.
So I’m establishing a new policy here at Photocritic International. The original Polaroid Corporation, the only entity that has ever operated under that name — the company that Edwin H. Land founded, and the company that built the Polaroid Collection — I will refer to henceforth as “the original Polaroid Corporation.” The company now manufacturing Polaroid-branded products I’ll call “New Polaroid.” The owners in between will be identified by the names of their respective legal entities. And I’ll set up an info page sometime soon defining them as clearly as possible, for everyone’s reference.
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For an index of links to all posts related to this story, click here.
It is a very complicated story indeed, with increasing misinformation being generated by more mainstream press outlets. It is good to clarify the very distinct entities that have been called Polaroid. I think the “new” Polaroid’s efforts to get attention are perhaps confusing people. If Polaroid had just gone away, the Collection story would be more obvious.
The “new” Polaroid did exhibit examples from the collection in their booth at CES in cooperation with PBE, which could further confuse. Their current efforts to revitalize the brand do include celebration of the history of Polaroid technology and imagery. Perhaps in an ideal world they could buy the Collection outright. As artists we ultimately don’t care who owns it as long as it stays together as one collection. That seems unlikely as the auction approaches — there is still time for a solution, but that is quickly running out.
New Polaroid — PLR IP Holdings, LLC, the company now marketing digital and analog products under the Polaroid brand — has the closest thing to an umbilical connection to the Collection of any corporation.
Their naming of Lady Gaga as a Creative Director, and their decision to partner with the Impossible Project to bring back SX-70 film and market new cameras that use it, suggest that they seek both a connection to youth culture and links to Polaroid’s cultural history. So yes, I agree that they’d make a perfect purchaser of the Collection.
Perhaps then they’d use it to start a new museum. Perhaps they’d donate it to one or more appropriate institutions. They’d have numerous options, certainly. And I believe that, as you say, the photographers represented would cooperate in any useful or necessary way with that transfer.
We should all keep in mind that, even assuming the auction by Sotheby’s goes through as planned, it includes only 1260 works out of an inventoried total of 15,936. That leaves 14,676 still in the hands of the court-appointed trustee, John R. Stoebner, for disposition. His job is to raise as much cash as he can, as quickly as he can, to settle the debts Tom Petters left in his wake. It’s a safe bet that Stoebner would much prefer to sell that entire collection, quickly, to a single buyer, and is prepared to negotiate.
So we need to turn some of our attention to alerting suitable repositories to the desirability and ongoing availability of the bulk of the collection, which remains a unique anthology of twentieth-century visual culture. And we need to make it clear that the photographers represented in the collection will assist as much as possible in the transfer of the collection to a permanent safe haven.
In short, we need to help the trustee find this collection — complete as is, or minus the auction selection but otherwise intact — a good new home.
Where ever there is money, be sure there is a scam artist lurking somewhere.