As an observer of the national and international photo scenes since 1967, I can safely say that no major manufacturer of photographic tools and materials demonstrated more open-handedness — or even-handedness — than the Polaroid Corporation in supplying its products to artists, photographers, and photo teachers (not just post-secondary but K-12 also), in large and sometimes endless quantities. […]
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Polaroid has begun to reinvent itself for the 21st century. As you’ll see at the company’s website, Polaroid hopes to reposition itself in the digital-imaging environment while building on its brand-name recognition and long history in the medium. More power to them. Inevitably, some of its earlier products will fall by the wayside during that process — to the dismay of their dedicated users. This represents elementary free-market economics in action. Type 55 film has become one of the casualties. . . . […] Why should student artists get special tutorials in “the business of being an artist” when no one seems to think that student anthropologists need special instruction in the business of being an anthropologist? Do we assume that young artists, as distinct from young physicists or historians or literary scholars, are special-needs cases meriting the pre-professional equivalent of training bras to ready them for the elementary truth that once they leave school they’ll have to earn a living somehow? […] We lost Bill Jay this spring. He died peacefully in his sleep on Sunday, May 10, 2009 in Samara, Costa Rica, where he’d set up residence. He was born in London in 1940. I got to know Bill after he left England (where he’d served as the first director of the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London and also worked under the late Colin Osman as the first editor of the germinal UK magazine Creative Camera. In 1970 he founded the short-lived but extremely influential UK magazine Album. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014All content of this publication is © copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by A. D. Coleman unless otherwise noted. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced for commercial purposes without prior written permission. All photos copyright by the individual photographers. "Fair use" allows quotation of excerpts of textual material from this site for educational and other noncommercial purposes.
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