Polaroids occupy a special place in the hearts of many photo enthusiasts who remember a time when "instant photography" meant a one-of-a-kind prints that developed within minutes of clicking the shutter. What was once a crucial tool for photographers to test their shots before shooting on film has now become obsolete in the face of digital photography. Luckily for us, legendary photographer Helmut Newton saved his test Polaroids, allowing a privileged and rare chance to see the tests from a selection of his greatest shoots over a period of decades, including many from the TASCHEN titles SUMO, A Gun for Hire, and Work. Put together by his widow, June Newton, his collection captures the magic of Helmut Newton photo shoots as only Polaroids can.

A powerful collection of the luminous last work by one of the true giants of twentieth-century photography. After the death of his wife, André Kertész consoled himself by taking up a new camera, the Polaroid SX70. As with earlier equipment, he mastered the camera and produced a provocative body of work that both honored his wife and lifted him out of depression. Here Kertész dips into his reserves one last time, tapping new people, ideas, and tools to generate a whole new body of work through which he transforms from a broken man into a youthful artist. Taken in his apartment just north of New York City’s Washington Square, many of these photographs were shot either from his window or in the windowsill. We see a fertile mind at work, combining personal objects into striking still lifes set against cityscape backgrounds, reflected and transformed in glass surfaces. Almost entirely unpublished work, these photographs are a testament to the genius of the photographer’s eye as manifested in the simple Polaroid.

内容简介： 乡愁，也是一种目光。这本俄国导演塔可夫斯基（Andrey Tarkovsky）的拍立得摄影集，背后有段曲折複杂的故事。1981年，塔可夫斯基已名声远播，受邀和妻子至义大利工作，继而计画定居异国。此举触怒苏联当局，于是将其儿子扣押，一家分隔两地，塔氏不得返回俄国。这本摄影集的前半部，包括大量塔可夫斯基在俄国时期的家庭、妻儿、及生活快照，后半部，则是他至义大利后的影像素写。除了他一贯的诗意与神秘气质外，裡面诸多故土与爱子照片，之后变成流亡异国的导演魂牵梦繫的执念，这些影像后来变成了电影《乡愁》。直到塔氏病痛缠身，即将离世前夕，其子才获准前往义大利，一家团聚。 本书的图片都由老塔亲自标上注解，整部书弥漫着一如其电影镜头般的昏黄深邃感，是一本拍利得版的小电影，值得影迷们收藏。

Defining moments In existence for over 50 years, the Polaroid Corporation's photography collection is the greatest collection of Polaroid images in the world. Begun by Polaroid founder Edwin Land and photographer Ansel Adams, the collection now includes Images by hundreds of photographers throughout the world and contains important pieces by artists such as David Hockney, Helmut Newton, Jeanloup Sieff, and Robert Rauschenberg. The Polaroid Book, a survey of this remarkable collection, pays tribute to a medium that defies the digital age and remains a favorite among artists for its quirky look and instantly gratifying, one-of-kind images.; over 400 works from the Polaroid Collection; essay by Polaroid's Barbara Hitchcock illuminating the beginnings and history of the collection; technical reference section featuring the various types of Polaroid cameras

"Instant photography at the push of a button!" During the 1960s and '70s, Polaroid was the coolest technology company on earth. Like Apple, it was an innovation machine that cranked out one must-have product after another. Led by its own visionary genius founder, Edwin Land, Polaroid grew from a 1937 garage start-up into a billion-dollar pop-culture phenomenon. Instant tells the remarkable tale of Land's one-of-a-kind invention-from Polaroid's first instant camera to hit the market in 1948, to its meteoric rise in popularity and adoption by artists such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close, to the company's dramatic decline into bankruptcy in the late '90s and its unlikely resurrection in the digital age. Instant is both an inspiring tale of American ingenuity and a cautionary business tale about the perils of companies that lose their creative edge.

What a sketch is for the painter is a Polaroid for the photographer, namely the first formulation of a concept, the raw material of the imagination, as it were. When Helmut Newton published a selection of his Polaroids in Pola Woman in 1992, the subculture called it a stroke of genius. It was the first time that the master let people look directly over his shoulder. We became witnesses to the magic and often intense process by which erotic fantasies become finished images; the preliminary stages of a perfectly styled Newton photograph. It is remarkable, if not astonishing, that even this "raw material" possesses very original qualities and a charm of its own.