The Rise and Fall of Polaroid: From Celebrity Favorite to Bankruptcy

Polaroid spent fifty years selling the instant, and it made the instant so ordinary that nobody would pay for it anymore. Edwin Land's camera turned a photograph into something that appeared in the palm of a hand, and for a generation the Polaroid was the most glamorous camera in America, carried by Andy Warhol, sold on television by Laurence Olivier and trusted by Ansel Adams. Then came Polavision, a takeover fight that put workers' savings into company stock, a 2001 bankruptcy, a second collapse tied to a fraud case, and a rescue of the film by a handful of believers in a Dutch factory. This is the full rise-and-fall story, from a college dropout's polarizing filter to the brand that survives today. In this episode: How a three-year-old's question in Santa Fe led Edwin Land to the instant camera The 1948 Land Camera that sold out on its first day at a Boston department store The SX-70, the camera that folded into a coat pocket and put Land on the cover of Life Andy Warhol's Big Shot, Walker Evans at seventy, and James Garner and Mariette Hartley Polavision, the instant home movie that arrived just as the videocassette did The 1988 takeover fight, the 2001 bankruptcy, and the retirees who paid for it The Impossible Project and the last instant film factory in Enschede Subscribe to Mainstreet Memories for more stories of the brands, stores and shopping streets that built America and then slipped away. #Polaroid #MainstreetMemories #RiseAndFall #EdwinLand #SX70 #InstantCamera #AndyWarhol #ImpossibleProject #PhotographyHistory #BrandsThatDied