‘Mr. Polaroid’ is a New Documentary About Edwin Land and Instant Photos

An upcoming TV documentary will look at inventor Edwin Land who is most famous for creating instant photography and founding the Polaroid Corporation.

In the 21st century, we take for granted that an image appears instantaneously — on the back of our camera or on our smartphone screen. But in the mid-20th century, the idea you could see an image moments after taking it was a revolutionary one, and it was the Polaroid that ushered instant photography into the mainstream.

Land and the invention of the Polaroid have been likened to Steve Jobs and the introduction of the iPhone. Now the story will be told in a new documentary called Mr. Polaroid as part of the PBS series American Experience starting on Monday, May 19. Trailer above.

Deadline reports that Mr. Polaroid is written and directed by Gene Tempest and produced by Amanda Pollak. The doc will look at Polaroid’s “unique” culture and how it became a model for today’s Silicon Valley tech culture.

“After years of trials, in 1947, Land demonstrated a working scientific prototype of his Polaroid camera to the press; by the 1948 Christmas season, the first Polaroid went up for sale in Boston,” a press release about the film reads.

“At that time, photography was no simple act. It involved chemicals, darkrooms, specialists or special equipment, and above all, time: it usually took a week for a customer to see a photo after it was snapped. Land wanted to create a device that would collapse time and put the darkroom inside the camera. Helping Land make this dream a reality was an unusual group of pioneering female scientists and researchers, including Eudoxia Muller, who would make the first successful Polaroid instant photograph in 1943, and Meroë Morse, who for almost 30 years ran the Film Research Division. Land’s inclusive vision would break industry norms and expand opportunities for women in cutting-edge technological innovation.”

Land is described as a “Harvard dropout” who dreamt of “a camera that you would use as often as your pencil or your eyeglasses.”

However, Deadline notes that comparisons to Steve Jobs fall short when it comes to business acumen. He undertook “risky financial gambles, a costly lawsuit against archrival Kodak, and an increasingly obsessive belief on Land’s part that technology could cure rifts in contemporary society.”