If you have work in either the U.S. or European Polaroid Collections, want to prevent the destruction of this world-famous archive via sale of its individual works at auction, and want to establish your claim to ownership of works you deposited in that collection on long-term loan, the time to act is now. […]
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Should the collection get dispersed via auction or other sales, then the potential for research into Polaroid photography diminishes immediately and dramatically. The collection as presently constituted has an obvious synergy on numerous levels: it embodies a history of creative use of a particular cluster of tools, materials, and processes over six decades; it shows how different picture-makers used the same medium and the same materials; it represents the tangible cumulative result of an unparalleled program of corporate support of the arts; and it reflects the curatorial and sponsorial decisions of a sequence of thoughtful figures empowered by Polaroid to subsidize production and gather the consequent output. . . . […] |
 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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Polaroid Collection: Update 2
Based on my admittedly layman’s reading of these documents, they constitute non-exclusive subsidiary-rights licenses based on the exchange of either money or goods for those rights, not transfers of ownership. What Polaroid acquired by that exchange appears voluntarily restricted on Polaroid’s part to “the right to republish my image(s)” and/or “the worldwide non-exclusive rights for exhibition and editorial (non-commercial) publication purposes of the following images in perpetuity.” Since these letters of agreement and release forms originated with the Polaroid Corporation, we can reasonably assume that their terms represent what Polaroid sought to obtain from the photographers with whom they chose to collaborate in this way. […]