A photo in ten seconds
In the days of the Jaguar E-type, every child was familiar with the Polaroid photo.
On February 21, 1947, Edwin Herbert Land presented a revolutionary photographic technique at the meeting of the Optical Society of America - photos that developed themselves and were visible after around ten seconds.
From 1963, Polaroid "films" were also available in color and were visible after around one minute. Professional photographers used this technique to control lighting, exposure, disturbing reflections or cast shadows. The "Pola" was almost identical to the later exposed slide.
The development process visible in later Polaroid variants was somewhat reminiscent of magic, and the sophisticated technique was admired. But even on the Polaroid, you could only see what could actually be photographed. On the Polaroid advertising subject shown here, the model can be seen sitting in the car, but in the background the model is standing in front of the car. The lady just had 10 seconds to get out of the car ...
In today's digital age, you can only smile at this expensive technology. Back then, a pack of 20 professional "color poles" in the size of 9x12cm cost around 120 francs, which resulted in a single image price of 6 francs. But back then we were glad to have the support of the "Polas", because they gave us great security that we had done the right thing on site and we were immune to unpleasant surprises. This insurance was still cheaper than repeating an entire shoot, if that had been possible at all.
