When Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard offered Polaroid his genius

Another reader has sent in a real gem. We think you’ll enjoy this look at Scientology’s fawning and earnest mythmaking about its founder.

Along with being an avid Scientology watcher, I’m an ardent film photographer, just like the Great Thetan himself. So when I found a new copy of Ron — Photographer: Writing With Light on Amazon for $5.95 — still in the shrink wrap! — I had to have it.

The book is as delightfully terrible as I’d hoped, but one passage in particular stood out to me: A reprint of a 1964 letter L. Ron Hubbard wrote to Edwin Land, co-founder of Polaroid and father of instant photography. Hubbard is attempting to inform Land about a flaw he perceived in the Polaroid Automatic 100 Land Camera.

The letter rambles like a drunkard, licking Land’s shoes and generously refusing recompense for explaining what Hubbard presumably thought Polaroid’s engineers were too stupid to figure out themselves. It stands out to me because it’s Hubbard in a nutshell: Narcissism, ignorance, repetition and verbosity mixed well and delivered in a staccato of single-sentence paragraphs. For those in the know, it takes a turn for the darker on the third page (“INSTRUCTION BOOKS”) where he basically restates the transition from Dianetics to the subscription cult of Scientology.

Here’s the text of the letter. For those not familiar with photography, Hubbard is complaining that the new camera’s shutter speed is too slow to prevent blurring the picture from not holding the camera steady. In fact, the camera had multiple shutter speeds and set them automatically. Though it’s hard to imagine someone with Hubbard’s grasp of the basics making such a mistake, he was probably trying to shoot pictures when there wasn’t sufficient light.

17th March 1964

Professor Land,
Polaroid Corporation,
730 Main Street,
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts 02139,
U.S.A.
Dear Professor Land:

Re: SOME MARKETING SUGGESTIONS

Some years ago (1956) I wrote to you that blue flash made better B & W pictures than white. Your engineering department courteously replied and, while I suppose the blue flash now used is only because of color film, and is probably not an outgrowth of my suggestion, I note that it is used which pleases me.

After having several Land cameras and backs, I just received a 100 and at once got to work with it.

What a splendid creation! My congratulations. Your genius is fully attested.

There are one or two small things I’d like to comment on in your presentation of this camera. As a professional in the field of research and development you might find my bits of some use.

SHUTTER SPEED:

I have tested out the 100 and find that you have not made a point adequately to your customers which could be very damaging to your sales.

You are possibly following Eastman’s early promotional pattern in many ways. The first Eastman marketing ideas were very sound. “Snapshot” “Box camera” “Anybody can take a picture” “Few gimmicks to know” etc. are all fine….

You’ve inherited a bug in shutter speed…. Actually it blurs pictures when hand held. The amount of blur is too small for the amateur to recognize it as blur. They just blame the camera.

Blur isn’t acceptable to amateurs. They see pro quality only in sharpness. Blur = amateur. Sharp = pro. That’s their index.

Your new 100 and the 3000 film are capable of fantastic sharpness.

But this new 100 shutter speed won’t give it to the amateur.

Even the 1/50th speed of a flash bulb isn’t fast enough to prevent hand-held cameras from blurring in most hands.

I put this 100 on a tripod where it belongs and I’m getting sharp pictures with flash and available that makes the amateur user blink.

For instance, my mother was an amateur photographer. But she gave it up because she could never get a sharp picture. Then I gave her a Rolleicord and nailed its shutter at a 1/250th … and she got right back into it, burning film by the hundreds of yards. Her pictures were wonderful and SHARP.

If amateurs cannot get sharp, well-exposed pictures they don’t burn film. They don’t even take pictures.

Every time an amateur has a bad series of failures he burns less film. It’s harder to get going again.

Give him several such losses and he lays the camera away….

Continual failures to get a decently exposed, sharp picture means an amateur slowing up on picture taking or stopping altogether.

You have set up 100 users, I am afraid, for a lot of failures on blur.

This color film and shutter speed don’t’ give sharp color pictures when hand held.

I don’t think this 100 can be hand held for optimum results even with flash. I can hold down to 1/30th but in British dull light, the 100 gets blur.

I know you’re supposed to wait for the second click but you still get enough blur to spoil pro quality.

This is harsh judgement but given in good spirit. You don’t have to rebuild any cameras.

All you have to do is tell these people in their instruction manual that if they want super-sharp pictures to use a cable release or self-timer and a tripod. Tripods didn’t stop the amateur in 1920, why should they in 1964?

The self-timer is a misnomer. It’s a Blurless Shutter Release. I shoot all scenics with a “self-timer” on a small tripod and the results are lovely. A self-timer ought to be capable of firing in 2 seconds, only time for tripod vibration to die.

My conclusion, for using the 100, subject to my becoming the Rock of Gibraltar, is that on B & W and color on the 100 I must use a tripod and shoot with a self-timer or cable release. And I’m making an older 100 user here gasp at what can be done that way.

It’s a lovely camera and I’m making it work. But that box camera potential shutter speed is costing people pictures — and you sales and above all, film sales. You are losing your camera buyers as picture-takers more often than you suppose. It’s very easy to lose an amateur picture taker. All you have to do is give him a few bad pictures. And he quits….

INSTRUCTION BOOK:

People will study from simple texts. I’m surprised you don’t issue a small number of instruction books anyway as a promotional idea. Five small pamphlets on how to take various things each under a different type of picture. The Land is so far removed from older photography that old style photography instruction books don’t apply. Thus a Land Camera operator tends to stultify. He’s got nothing to graduate to, no method of advance. No texts to study….

As it is you could sell a camera and forget the user and you lose out on film sales. You could move Land operators up to advanced amateur easily if you taught them how. They don’t know and there’s no way for them to learn as old photo manuals, they think — and rightly — don’t apply.

They receive 5 books, study each answer and the exam in the back of the book, mail it in. You mark it and send it back. When you’ve got 5 answer sheets and the pictures you require, you send them a Land Photographer certificate and everybody’s happy….

Your promotion is a bit on the inhuman side, understandable due to your wonderful technical achievements. But PEOPLE use them.

The Land Camera will go as far as the public takes it.

Of course I’d see it that way since I’m the expert on people. But biased or not there’s truth in this view. If you cut off technically from the old, you have to assume the full burden of pushing the new. And a needed part of any newness is through education.

You’re a revolution in photography. But a revolution without complete re-education potential can fail….

All this is sent in a very helpful frame of mind.

The 100 is pure genius….

No claim, fees, or recompense of any kind attaches to any of my suggestions. You have probably thought of most of this, so regard my suggestions as a viewpoint from a user, not a criticism of your excellent product.

Sincerely,
L. Ron Hubbard

And to think, the Scientologists thought this was worth republishing, as if it made the Old Man look like a genius rather than an ignorant meddler with an inflated sense of self-importance.

The funniest part to me is the idea of all these snap-shooters lugging around tripods. Remember, the Polaroid was basically the phone camera of its day. Did Ron forget that the average wog lacked adoring minions to haul their photo gear and light their Kools?

I assume Polaroid didn’t answer, or the Scienos would have published it (unless Land wrote the reply I had in mind, which is “Dear Mr. Hubbard: Thank you for your letter. Fuck off and buy a Kodak. Instantly yours. Ed”).

What about the rest of the book?

It’s pretty clear the authors were working hard to fill its 250-or-so pages. The bulk of it is yet another breathless recounting of Ron’s adventures, this time with photos, some taken by him, some with him in them. Several pages feature his favorite photographic gear, which included cameras of every size and style. Hubbard had what modern photographers call a serious case of GAS, or Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Take filters (colored glass that screws onto the end of a lens) — most film photogs I know, if they use them at all, have maybe four or five. Hubbard had 1,300.

According to the book, Hubbard spent a great deal of time (and, presumably, parishioners’ money) “testing” this equipment, taking photos of test patterns to figure out exactly what every camera, lens, film, light meter, filter, flash, and whatever else he bought could do in order to understand its characteristics. In the digital age we call this “pixel-peeping”, and it denotes people more obsessed with their gear than using it to make interesting photos.

Of course, Ron declared himself an expert in the field. The book includes a little of his photo “tech”, like his SAFE acronym: Shutter, Aperture, Focus, Expose. For those unfamiliar, this is every bit as innovative as my GALS technology of driving a car: Gear, Accelerator, Look, Steer. (Go ahead and scoff, but mankind has never discovered a successful technology of driving — until now!)

So was Ron a good photographer? For all the equipment he owned, all the testing he did, all the travels he took, and all the expertise he claimed, you’d expect him to have made some pretty spectacular photos.

He didn’t.

Most of the pics in the book are colorful, well-exposed and thoroughly forgettable snaps of the sort you see in travel brochures and museum handouts—which, as it happens, are about the only places outside of Scientology’s own works that his photos were published.

LRH’s photos are exactly what you’d expect from a man who bought the finest equipment available after learning photography from a correspondence course — which, apparently, is exactly what he did (though the book goes to great lengths to tell us it was a good school). Oddly enough, I think the pictures he snapped as a kid, before he “mastered” the art of photography, are the most interesting in the book.

One thing I did think was quite good was his portrait work — or perhaps I should say his self-portrait work. I was amazed to learn that most of the photos we see of L. Ron Hubbard were taken not by earnest Scientologists applying his photo technology, but by the Ol’ Fraud himself. He used a remote shutter release in his pocket and, sometimes, a rear projection system to provide backdrops that made it appear as if he was somewhere else. I suppose I should not be surprised. After all, who else would Hubbard trust to photograph such an important man as himself?

I find it equal parts amusing and sad to think of Hubbard sitting there in his studio in Old Saint Hill and mugging for his own camera.

I think if Hubbard had shot portraits of others, they might have been pretty good, but that probably didn’t fit with his narcissistic personality, which is probably why we don’t see many — although the book does laud one official portrait he took for a low-level government official in Curacao. It’s a generic look-magnanimous-while-pretending-you’re-signing-something corporate pose that’s not even well arranged in the frame. It’s not as good as Ron’s self-portraits, and why would it be?

I learned little from the book save how to turn an interesting scene into a boring photo, but in terms of pure amusement, Ron: Photographer was almost worth the six bucks I paid for it.

— George Eastwog

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

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