20×24 Holdings set up a lab and warehouse at Belding Mill in Putnam CT less than one year ago.  We transformed the space, building a darkroom to house the film spooler, moved one of Polaroid’s original pod machines into place and began testing formulas for reagents for our three films, Polacolor 3, Polacolor 7 and PP400.  Today we perfected the final piece of the puzzle, the reagent for PP400, our black and white emulsion.  We are now spooling cases of film from our large roll inventory and making pods for a new P7 reagent.  From today’s test we will move to a full production run of reagent at out reactor housed at Webco Chemical in Dudley, MA and come back to Belding Mill and place this reagent into pods.  It is a very exciting time for 20×24 Holdings, our perseverance and hard work are finally paying off. Special thanks to Paul Nangeroni, formerly of the Polaroid Black and White research lab for his consultation in formulating this new reagent.

In nearly 40 years of creating large-scale iconic images, American artist Chuck Close had never taken a commission, or allowed his work to be used commercially. That will change this year when Mr. Close starts shooting an ad campaign for AOL.  It’s not strictly an ad campaign, but more a showcase of American artists, designers and inventors, part of a year-long “Project on Creativity,” which includes Mr. Close making images of AOL users that have made a difference, like inventor Dean Kamen, who designed the wheelchair he uses to get around, filmmaker Gus Van Sant, also an AOL user (who knew?), and actress Claire Danes.  “I really wanted to get involved because of their commitment to creativity on all fronts,” Mr. Close said at the unveiling of the project at AOL’s 25th anniversary party at the New Museum in New York City.  Read more here.

Pop sensation Lady Gaga, who recently signed a deal with Polaroid to be a Creative Director for some new product lines, visited the MIT Museum in Cambridge Massachusetts on June 3oth.  Polaroid recently donated items from the corporate archive to MIT which includes the prototype 20×24 Camera from 1976.  Lady Gaga, who reveres analog instant photography immediately fell in love with the 235 pound camera and jumped right in to create a series of over twenty self portraits.  She chose our classic Polapan 400 20×24 film for this series. Among the props supplied by the MIT Museum were Dr. Land’s 50 year old desk chair and pairs of the original Polaroid 3D glasses from the 1950s.