The Land List -- Credits and Bibliography

The Land List started out in 1992 as a spare-time-excuse-to-avoid-working-on-my-masters-thesis. It is the product of compiling together information gleaned from numerous Polaroid sales brochures and instruction manuals, not to mention several books and other resources-- including direct observation of the products themselves. Much of the depth of the Land List would not be possible without the contributions of fellow Polaroid Land Camera fanciers, including (but not limited to):

• Hendrik de Gids, a Land Camera collector from the Netherlands, who has even written at least one magazine article on the subject.
• Georg Holderied, SX-70 experimenter, and author of the fine web resource, The Hacker's Guide to the SX-70.
• Mike Johnson, who has provided lots of tidbits found from his own research into Land camera history.
• William Sommerwerk, a collector and owner of many unusual Polaroid items, who has often sent in comments / clarifications / corrections about material found on this site.
• Bruce Tidball, who has provided helpful information in identifying some of the otherwise undocumented variants of Polaroid camera models.
• Mag. Edtberger Franz, a Polaroid collector from Austria, whose own Polaroid camera 'catalog' has provided great assistance in expanding the coverage of International-market Polaroid camera models here.
• Bob Huber, another Land-collector who has contributed information about some unusual Polaroid accessories and products.
• ...and the friendly folks at Polaroid Customer Support, which have been ever-so helpful even if they don't always have the answers to my oddball historical trivia questions. :-)

Wensberg, Peter C. Land's Polaroid (A Company and the Man Who Invented It). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1987.

This is a rather well-written biography of Edwin Land and of the Polaroid Corporation in general. Peter Wensberg worked at Polaroid from 1958 to the mid 80's (when he left as executive vice-president shortly after Land's departure), and so much of the book is written from this point of view. Definitely an informative and entertaining read.

Polaroid Corporation. The First Thirty Years: 1948-1978 (A Chronology of Polaroid Photographic Products). Cambridge: Polaroid Corp. 1978.

This is a large pamphlet (29 pages) which Polaroid published to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Land camera. Most of the information in The Land List regarding international (non-US) camera models was taken from this reference, actually.

Wolbarst, John. Pictures In a Minute. 2nd and 3rd ed. New York: American Photographic Book Publishing. 1958, 1960.

This very well-written users guide to Polaroid cameras would be a must-read for anyone who would like to learn more about technique and usage regarding Polaroid rollfilm cameras, if Polaroid Land rollfilm was still available, at least. This book (in all its editions) was very popular in its day, and was at least considered quasi-official by the Polaroid Corp. In some ways, one might think of it as the Polaroid equivalent to Kodak's preennial title How To Make Good Pictures. There was also a special version of this book which dealt specifically with the J66/J33 automatic "electric-eye" cameras. It appears that John Wolbarst did not write equivalent books for the later generations of Polaroid cameras, but I'd like to be proven wrong on that.

Editors at Popular Photography magazine. Polaroid Land Photography. New York: A.S. Barnes. 1963.

Popular Photography magazine published this special instructional book and portfolio of Land photographs as an introduction to the then-brand-new Polacolor film.