20×24 Studio

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.

It has been nearly a year since we took possession of the 20×24 Film production equipment and inventory from Polaroid. Over the summer of 2009 we found facilities to house the large reagent mixing reactor and the pod making machine and film spooler. This is our facility at Belding Mill, in Putnam, CT where we house some film inventory, test batch chemistry and mixing equipment and the Pod Machine itself, known as MEGA #4 when it was one of 22 pod machines in Polaroid’s Waltham factory. With great care it was moved from a Polaroid warehouse last summer and installed, rewired and hooked up to nitrogen and compressed air to make it operational once more. On this day pictured we ran over 600 Polacolor ER pods for 20×24 film.