During its 60 years of producing film and cameras for instant photography, Polaroid encouraged artists to experiment. “The Polaroid Years” looks at the history of a medium that, for the most part, no longer exists.

After the Japanese government put a muzzle on Kansuke Yamamoto’s writings, the surreal artist expressed himself through his art. His anti-government ideals peak through his photocompositions, which range from straightforward gelatin prints to combination prints with multiple negatives to multimedia pieces.

Bert Hardy had the one quality that makes a great documentary photographer: He was able to get close to people. It was the ease with which he approached people that turned this beloved British photographer into a star. His photos offer a rare insight into the everyday lives of ordinary people in postwar Britain.

Toshio Shibata takes photographs of structures that normally only a civil engineer would pause to appreciate. Dams and buoys and dirty water are not what anyone would envision while thinking of Japan’s most eye-catching landscapes. But when captured by Shibata, they take on a simple, stark beauty.

Claire Aho worked as a photographer during an age when the advertising and photography world was dominated by men, as depicted in the popular television show, “Man Men.” “In the 1950s I never thought I did pioneering work. I just worked hard,” she says. “The expression ‘pioneer’ was affixed to me later.”

Bert Stern had the most in-demand iconic beauties of the 1950s and ’60s in front of his camera, including Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren. Possibly most memorably, he captured Marilyn Monroe six weeks before she died for a series later known as “The Last Sitting.”

Whenever photographer Paul McDonough had enough time and money to get out of the city in the ’70s and ’80s, the New Yorker would pack his camera bag and drive. He’d have Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” in his back pocket and wander until his money ran out, he said.

At the heart of LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work is a deep interest in the complex relationship between mother and daughter, she says. Set in Braddock, Pennsylvania, the former steel mill town where Frazier was born and raised, her photographs portray a struggling city and its effect on those who live in its shadow.