Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Land Grab...


Only seven 20x24 Polaroid Land cameras were made. Now artists compete to use them. Their prints are highly collectible.


"The so-called 20x24 Land Camera is a 235-pound behemoth, producing prints nearly 2 feet square. Edwin Land (1909-91), founder of Polaroid, built just seven of them, and only four are still in commercial use. (Two are on exhibit, at MIT and Harvard; the last has been lost. Mammoth Cameras has replicated the original.) Each one-of-a-kind photograph retails for upwards of $3,500 per print--a professional might spend $1,750 a day to rent the camera and $200 on a print--and few but the wealthy and famous can afford to be snapped by the contraption".

"Taller than a typical man, the camera is as broad as a door and just as deep, equipped with sagging bellows that can extend up to 60 inches, a dozen brass knobs and three powerful crank handles. It's often paired with an equally large lighting setup: Because the film's exposure time is so lengthy, a 10,000-to-20,000-watt flash is necessary to capture the image".

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