Morse and Polaroid’s Creative Ethos

In 1968, Smith College presented Morse with the Smith College Medal, their outstanding graduate award, given to alums who “exemplify in their lives and service to the community or to the college the true purpose of a liberal arts education.”1 Smith College president Thomas C. Mendenhall wrote of Morse, “You join your own warmth, imagination, and curiosity with a sympathetic appreciation of others and a keen eye for their different talents, to help bring purpose and direction into the lives of all you have touched.” Reflecting on the value of Morse’s humanities background, Mendenhall continued, “I note with interest (and I hope it encourages the vocationally-confused among today’s undergraduates), that you were an art major at Smith and never took chemistry, physics, or business administration while here.”2

The Smith award also recognized Morse’s artistic talents. She earned local renown as a performance artist of sorts, illustrating poems and songs with chalk and charcoal drawings as a simultaneous accompaniment to live performances by musical ensembles in schools, clubs, and churches. An accomplished harpist (she had six harps in her apartment on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston), she played concerts throughout New England. She also taught art and photography and served on the board of directors at the Cambridge Settlement House, which provided social services to the urban poor and campaigned for social justice, and she volunteered at Jobs Clearing House, a job placement program for African Americans.

In May 1969, Morse became the first woman elected Fellow of the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers for her contributions to the field of photography. Two months later, on July 29, Morse died from cancer at age 46. In August of that year, James Harnett, a researcher in Morse’s lab, wrote to Ansel Adams that “It’s still hard to think of Meroe not being with us; she is being missed deeply by us all.” He reported that Land had “personally taken over the many projects she had going. . . . This is keeping the morale high.”3 Adams responded, “Yes, its [sic] tough without Meroe. . . . It is typical of the Boss to pitch in and elevate the morale!”4 Land preserved Morse’s office for company visitors; in it was a color photograph of Morse taken by Marie Cosindas a few months before she died.5

Albert Hyland, who worked with Morse on the Artist Support Program, described her as the guiding spirit of Polaroid and observed that after her death Land trusted no one else as completely.6 Victor McElheny maintains that Morse “had confidence and a talent for diplomacy, essential in moving a technical capability from the lab to the factory floor to the advertising agency to the merchants and on to the customers and users. . . . People trusted her and missed her when she was gone.”7

Within Polaroid’s interdisciplinary and innovation-focused culture, Morse was able to reflect deeply on technical and aesthetic solutions to the advancement of instant photography while guiding and encouraging others to do the same. Consultant photographer Paul Caponigro believed that Morse was “quite a psychic woman . . . she was able to dig a little deeper in the research, and I think that’s why Land took so much to her . . . she was a source . . . for ideas that would come, more than just an intellectual pursuit.”8 Morse saw beyond the parameters of the conventional world and, as Howard Rogers wrote, made “impossible problems possible. . . . Everyone who came in contact with her felt uplifted by her presence.”9

In the archives is an undated letter in Morse’s hand in which she muses about the dependence of “constructive groups” on the “leadership by an individual with an extraordinary array of intellectual and emotional competences. Such individuals are rare.”10 Morse may have been referring to Land, but her observation aptly characterizes her own abilities as an inspiring mentor and leader. In her short life, she contributed to major developments in a pioneering photographic technology and rose to be a chief consultant of a groundbreaking Fortune 500 company. Meroë Morse embodied the best in the realms of business, science, art, and humanity, and, as many Polaroid photographs taken of her attest, she radiated a luminescence that touched all those around her.