The auction stems from the collapse of Polaroid last year, after its parent company found itself embroiled in a Ponzi scheme. In August 2009, a Minnesota Bankruptcy Court approved a request from PBE Corporation (a remnant of the collapsed Petters Group, which owned Polaroid Corporation) to break up and sell the collection.

The Polaroid Collection was created in the late 1960s and comprised photographs and negatives from more than 1500 photographers including as Ansel Adams, William Wegman, Chuck Close, Lucas Samaras and Harry Callahan. In total, it holds more than 22,000 items, however, numbers differ between 16,000 as catalogued by Sotheby’s, which will sell only 1260 of these images, and the 24,000 claimed by Polaroid before it went bankrupt.

BJP understands this estimate doesn’t include the 4577 of Polaroid positives held by the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. A spokeswoman for the Impossible Project, which earlier this year re-launched instant films for Polaroid cameras, has confirmed to BJP that her company had placed a bid with the Musée de l’Elysée to acquire its collection.

“We don’t want to see that collection broken up like its US counterpart,” she tells BJP. “We want to preserve it as it is, as a collection.” The bid is currently being reviewed and a final decision is expected for next week.

In the meantime, Polaroid artists and fans will closely monitor the auctions at Sotheby’s. The collection, in the past, didn’t find any institutional acquirers to preserve it in its entirety, so the extent of the break-up will be of considerable interest.

Sotheby’s says that what are offered in the auctions “are masterworks from an era when Polaroid was king, and its cameras were, for many, the essence of modern photography.” The four auctions will see 485 lots being offered to bidders – see an e-Catalog of the lots here. There are expected to fetch between $7.5m and $11.5m, with some images selling for at least $400,000.

Speaking to reporters at a preview last week, Sotheby’s photography department director Denise Bethel praised the quality of the images, but also addressed the controversy saying that the auction house was acting on a court order. She added that while some artists have objected to the sale, others were happy to see the collection go under the hammer. Prompted to name them, Bethel declined. See the video at Art Journal’s CultureGrrl blog.

At the heart of the controversy is the matter of copyright over the images. As BJP previously wrote, in effect, PBE doesn't own the copyright. The images were loaned to Polaroid by their authors. However, PBE Corporation argues that when Polaroid went bankrupt once in 2001 and again in 2008, the Polaroid Collection, as a Polaroid asset, changed status and was acquired by new owners “free and clear of all liens, claims and encumbrances.”

But, says American critic Allan Coleman, despite this, PBE wouldn’t need to own the copyright in order to go ahead with the sale. "What they are auctioning is not the copyright but the objects," he tells BJP. "Copyright remains with the photographer." In this case though, copyright ultimately becomes useless because of the uniqueness of a Polaroid.

"In the US there are two levels of copyright protection," Coleman explains. "The first level comes into force automatically when you create something. If you can prove you created it, you can prevent anyone from exploiting it. There is a second higher level of copyright protection when you register your work with the Library of Congress. In order to register, you need to supply the library with a copy of the work," he adds. "With this level of protection, you can sue for statutory damages if someone exploits your work. With the first level, you would have to prove damages, which isn't always easy."

When Polaroid built its extensive collection, the contracts it drafted gave the artists access to the works in perpetuity. "They could access and borrow their images whenever they wanted for their own use - exhibitions, books, and so on," says Coleman.

But, this contract will be nullified once the collection gets dispersed and changes hands. "It's no longer possible for the photographers to access the work," he says.

The fact that it's virtually impossible to replicate an image shot on instant film makes access to the work essential for photographers to assert their rights. "Since they don't have access, they can't license the works. All they have is the copyright, which is meaningless now. I don't think the court understood the unique nature of the collection."

The auction will start on 21 June and continue all day on 22 June. As for the 14,000 remaining Polaroid images that won’t be sold in the auctions, Bethel says that PBE is working with a number of people to place that material with, hopefully, an institution. “There are wonderful things left in the collection,” she says. See the video here.

Check back later this week on BJP-Online for a full-report of the auctions. For more details, also visit PhotoCritic by Allan Coleman, who has been tracking and writing about the Polaroid Collection for the past two years.