Marie Cosindas and the Polaroid 1969 annual report

I don't know if it was Edwin Land who discovered Marie, or Stan Calderwood, who always took credit for it, but Marie's photos fortuitously took Polaroid photography from the stodgy and to my mind, depressing, black-and-white artsy images of the entrenched establishment to the best of Polaroid's Golden Years and Stan's introduction of Polacolor film and the inexpensive Polaroid Colorpack II introduced on page 2 of this 1969 Polaroid Corporation Annual Report.

Chehalis Hegner, Marie Cosindas at the PRC, Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, 2010

 

Marie Cosindas, Vivian, 1966

 

 Marie Cosindas, Louise Nevelson,  1970

I don't know why Marie has been absent from prestigious collections of Polaroid photos. From my perspective, she epitomizes the best of Polaroid photography. 

Front cover of annual report

Color stripes and package design of Colorpack II by Paul Giambarba, art direction of report and photos by Bill Field, Polaroid Corporation

 

Marie Cosindas, Girl with Bouquet,   [for Helena Rubinstein]

Philippe Halsman, Georgia O'Keeffe 

 

Yousuf Karsh, Bruce Downs [Editor and Publisher of Popular Photography magazine]

 

Paul Giambarba, [My son] Andrew

 

William Capp Pierce, Girl with dark hair

 

Mel Sokolsky, Chief Burning Tree

 

Bert Stern, Clown, back cover of annual report

I have no way of knowing what the hardware was used to take the above photos so I can only venture a guess. To my knowledge, there was no 8x10 inch film available until 1973, so the film was either Polaroid Colorpack film Type 180 or 4x5 film Type 58 used in an attachment to a 4x5 view camera. My photo was taken with an off-the-shelf Model 100 and Type 108 film.

Comments

[Harry McCracken]

Marie Cosindas is a gem. Thanks so much for sharing these.