Art

For those who've long admired Ansel Adams' evocative black-and-white images of Yosemite and other national parks, an exhibition opening this month at the Naples Museum of Art will provide a tantalizing look at some of his other images, including rare examples of the photographer's early commercial works and his one-of-a-kind Polaroid prints.

The latter would not have been possible without the invention of instant Polaroid photography by Adams' contemporary, Edwin Land.

Correspondence between Adams and Land is also included in the exhibition, curated by Linda Benedict-Jones of the Silver Eye Center for Photography, and Barbara Hitchcock, director of cultural affairs for the Polaroid Corporation.

Land first became interested in polarized light (light oriented in a plane with respect to the source) while a freshman at Harvard in the 1920s. While still very young, he developed a new kind of polarizer, which he called Polaroid, by aligning and embedding crystals in a plastic sheet. In 1937, Land and other scientists formed the Polaroid Corporation, concentrating during World War II on inventing and producing infrared filters and target finders. But Land's most popular and famous product was the self-developing Polaroid camera, which debuted in 1947.

Ansel Adams and Edwin Land: Art, Science and Invention-Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, runs May 22 through July 31. Another photography show, Staging Reality: Photography from the West Collection at SEI, which features works by James Casebere and Todd Hido, is on view at the museum May 15-July 31. For more information, call 597-1900.