Peter Beard’s work will be exhibited as a part of The Polaroid Project, a traveling exhibition mounted by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and curated by William Ewing, Barbara Hitchcock, Gary Van Zante, Deborah G. Douglas and Rebekka Reuter.
The Project
Polaroid, despite the demise of the great corporation, remains a highly respected name, evoking innovation, utility, creativity and quality. In the photography world, Polaroid has only the finest connotations, and the bankruptcy of the corporation has rightly been viewed as a tremendous loss for the field of artistic expression. Photographers were deprived of a creative laboratory that was unparalleled in the medium’s history.
The story of Polaroid is fascinating and instructive on many levels – industrially, technologically, artistically, economically, culturally and socially. There is even a military aspect. It is a story of brilliant marketing and salesmanship, but also a tale of complacency and blindness in the face of digital competition, and dismal management after Land’s demise. But in its heyday Polaroid was loved by millions of amateurs and embraced by countless professionals. Families recorded their lives; fashion and portrait photographers made tests with it; scientists used it for notes and records; while artists found it to be an exceptionally malleable and expressive medium.
It is our intention to produce a wide-ranging exhibition encompassing all aspects of Polaroid photography, including the technology that made it possible, and to simultaneously publish a serious study of Polaroid photography that will contribute to the understanding of Edwin Land’s outstanding invention on each of the levels listed above, something that has not been attempted in the past.
The Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography
http://www.fep-photo.org/exhibition/polaroid/
Venue list
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth TX
June 3-September 3 2017
WestLicht Museum for Photography, Vienna
December 5 2017-March 4 2018
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Hamburg
March 16-June 17 2018
C/O Berlin, Berlin
July 7-September 23 2018
MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Late 2019, early 2020
Exhibition Partner
The MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA, is a co-producer of the exhibition, along with WestLicht Museum for Photography, Vienna.
