The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation

About the publication

From its inception in 1947, the Polaroid system inspired artists to experiment—to dazzling effect—with the cameras’ unique technologies. Edwin Land, the inventor of the first Polaroid instant camera, remarked on his discovery, “Photography will never be the same.” And he was right. This fascinating journey through the Polaroid era documents the evolution of instant photography. Hundreds of color images celebrate the myriad ways Polaroid photographs have been used and ingeniously manipulated by Walker Evans, David Hockney, Barbara Kasten, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucas Samaras, and others. The book features essays by Mary-Kay Lombino and Peter Buse that address the unique technology of instant photography and the marketing genius of the Polaroid Corporation. Artist statements from Ellen Carey, Chuck Close, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Bryan Graf, Miranda Lichtenstein, David Levinthal, Joyce Neimanas, Lisa Oppenheim, Catherine Opie, John Reuter, William Wegman, and James Welling reveal how Polaroids affected and, in many instances, forever changed the way they captured the world around them.

This hardcover book is 224 pages and includes 230 illustrations and is co-published by DelMonico Books and Prestel (April, 2013).

Mary-Kay Lombino is the Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. She has curated exhibitions including Off the Shelf: New Forms in Contemporary Artists’ Books and Utopian Mirage: Social Metaphors in Contemporary Photography.

Available titles:

• The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation

  Exhibition: April 12 - June 30, 2013

• Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England

  Exhibition: April 8 – June 12, 2011

• 150 Years Later: New Photography by Tina Barney, Tim Davis, and Katherine Newbegin

  Exhibition: January 28 - March 28, 2011

• Albrecht Dürer: Impressions of the Renaissance

  Exhibition: November 14 – December 24, 2009

• Drawn by New York: Six Centuries of Watercolors and Drawings at the New-York Historical Society

  Exhibition: August 14 – November 1, 2009

• Catching Light: European and American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection

  Exhibition: May 8 – July 26, 2009

• Faith and Fantasy in Outsider Art from the Permanent Collection

  Exhibition February 13 – Aril 26, 2009

• Paris-New York: Modern Paintings in 19th and 20th Century. Masterworks from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

  Exhibition: April 30 - June 4, 1978

• Excerpt: Selections from the Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn Collection

  Exhibition September 26, 2008 – January 4, 2009

• Facebook: Images of People in Photographs from the Permanent Collection

  Exhibition June 27 – August 10, 2008

• Out of Shape: Stylistic Distortions of the Human Form in Art from the Logan Collection

  Exhibition March 14 – June 8, 2008

• The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Prestel Museum Guide: The History and the Collection

  A handbook of ninety highlights emphasizing the range and breadth of the collection.

• Saul Steinberg: Illuminations

  Exhibition November 2, 2007 – February 24, 2008

• Utopian Mirage: Social Metaphors in Contemporary Photography and Film

  Exhibition: May 25 – July 29, 2007

• Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints

  Exhibition: March 23 – May 13, 2007

• For the People: American Mural Drawings of the 1930s and 1940s

  Exhibition January 12- March 11, 2007

• Off the Shelf: New Forms in Contemporary Artists’ Books

  Exhibition October 6 – December 17, 2006 


• Copies Casts and Pedagogy: The Early Teaching of Art and Art History at Vassar College

  Exhibition: September 13- October 22, 2006

• Subterranean Monuments: Burckhardt, Johnson, Hujar

  Exhibition June 20 – September 17, 2006 


• Forms of Exchange: Art of the Native Peoples from the Edward J. Guarino Collection

  Exhibition: April 28-September 3, 2006

• Danish Paintings of the Nineteenth Century from the Collection of Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr.

  Exhibition: September 30-December 18, 2005

• Time and Transformation

  Exhibition April 8 – June 19, 2005

• Marvels of Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics from the Corcoran Gallery of Art

  Exhibition: April 9-August 1, 2004

• The Transmission of Fame: Italian Renaissance Prints

  Exhibition April 9 – June 13, 2004

• Andreas Feininger

  Exhibition January 17-March 16, 2003

• Made in Woodstock: Printmaking from 1903 to 1945

  Exhibition: July 5 - September 15, 2002

• Modern Metropolis

  Exhibition April 5-June 16, 2002

• Summer Reading: The Recreation of Language in Twentieth-Century Art

  Exhibition June 29-September 16, 2001

• From Manet to Picasso: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Prints and Drawings

  Exhibition April 6-June 10, 2001

• Humanizing Landscapes: Geography, Culture and the Magoon Collection 1739-1860

  Exhibition October 5 - December 20, 2000

• Kunié Sugiura

  Exhibition June 30 - September 17, 2000

• Making Light: Wit and Humor in Photography

  Exhibition April 6 - June 11, 2000

• Landscapes of Retrospection: The Magoon Collection of British Drawings and Prints 1739-1860

  Exhibition October 15 - December 19, 1999

• Refining the Imagination: Tradition, Collecting, and the Vassar Education

  Exhibition April 23 - September 19, 1999

• Heroic America: James Daugherty's Mural Drawings from the 1930s

  Exhibition April 3 - June 7, 1998

• American Fighters: A Century of Boxing in Art

  Exhibition: March 29 - May 26, 1996

• European Master Drawings from the Collection of Peter Jay Sharp

  Exhibition: September 19 - December 22, 1995

• The Felix M. Warburg Print Collection: A Legacy of Discernment

  Exhibition October 7 - December 11, 1994

• Into the Afterlife: Han and Six Dynasties Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection

  Exhibition: September 28 - November 25, 1990

• Old Master Drawings: From the Print Room of the University, Leiden, The Netherlands

  Exhibition: October 8 - November 20, 1988

• Charmed Places: Hudson River Artists and Their Houses, Studios and Vistas

  Exhibition April 24 - August 12, 1988

• A Breath of Light: The Contemporary Platinum Print

  Exhibition: April 11 - May 17, 1987

• D'Ora: Vienna & Paris 1907-1957, The Photography of Dora Kallmus

  Exhibition: April 11 - June 7, 1987

• Avant-Garde Chinese Art: Beijing/New York

  Exhibition: November 7 - December 8, 1986

• Vanessa Bell: 1879-1961

  Exhibition: September 20 - October 28, 1984

• Violet Oakley: The Decoration of the Alumnae House Living Room

  Exhibition: April 27 - June 3, 1984

• America and the Grand Tour: Sanford Robinson Gifford at Home and Abroad

  25 pages, 7 black and white photographs

• All Seasons and Every Light

  Exhibition: October 14 - December 16, 1983

• Vassar College Art Gallery: Paintings 1300-1900

  Published 1983

• Raphael, Michelangelo And Others: Raphael and his Contemporaries in Rome

  Published 1983.

• Artists at Large: Photographs by Rollie McKenna

  Exhibition: September 9 - October 24, 1982

• Roma Alessandrina: The Remapping of Rome Under Alexander VII 1655-1667

  Published 1982.

• Vassar College Art Gallery: Sculpture

  Published 1982.

• Hudson Valley People: Albany to Yonkers, 1700-1900

  Exhibition: April 16 - June 6, 1982

• An Exhibition in Memory of Agnes Rindge Claflin

  Exhibition: April 30 - June 4, 1978

• Seventeenth Century Dutch Landscape Drawings and Selected Prints from American Collections

  Exhibition: March 28 - May 7, 1976