From Polaroid to Impossible.

Masterpieces of Instant Photography. The WestLicht Collection.

Edited by Achim Heine, Rebekka Reuter, Ulrike Willingmann, texts by Achim Heine, Barbara P. Hitchcock & Florian Kaps.

Hatje Cantz, 2011. 192 pp., 230 color illustrations, 9¾x12½".

While the world evaporates into the digital, the anachronistic Polaroid snapshot dominates media and advertising. The recent sale of the photography collection owned by Polaroid’s inventor Edwin Land to the Viennese photography museum WestLicht marks an art-market trend toward the analog. Beginning in the sixties, Polaroid supplied artists around the world, from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol, with each one of the imperium’s latest products. In return, 4,400 works by 800 photographers found their way into the company’s International Collection at their European headquarters near Frankfurt am Main. In 2008, when the last instant film factory was rescued from demolition by the company Impossible, the founder’s commitment to collecting could be carried on as well. This publication features selected Polaroid masterpieces and new Impossible instant photography by contemporary artists such as Stefanie Schneider and Nobuyoshi Araki.

Read John Mathews's review of From Polaroid to Impossible in photo-eye Magazine.

Ordering Information

This item is currently unavailable from photo-eye, Amazon and Amazon Marketplace.

Other recent books by Achim Heine

Our customers who bought this also purchased

Masonry OFF