Docs & Dialogue: Mr. Polaroid

Docs & Dialogue: Mr. Polaroid (McNabb Branch)

Wednesday, May 13th, 5:00 p.m.

Long before the iPhone, another inventive device made it possible to instantly chronicle everyday life: the  Polaroid camera. Both the product and the company’s distinctive culture sparked an instant-photography  craze and helped shape the model for today’s Silicon Valley tech ethos. The story begins in the fall of  1948 with the debut of the Polaroid Model 95, whose revolutionary ability to deliver a photograph on the  spot would transform photography, and eventually the world.

Mr. Polaroid tells the little-known story of the visionary behind the camera, Edwin Land, a Harvard  dropout who, decades before the smartphone, imagined “a camera that you would use as often as your  pencil or your eyeglasses.” Convinced his company could lead, and even save, the world, Land fueled a  saga defined by ambition, brilliance, hubris, and technology, culminating in a billion photographs a year  and a rollicking chapter in American innovation. The film is 53 minutes, not rated, and made possible  through Kanopy. The program is free and open to the public.