The Art of Time Travel: Back to the 90s

by Skip Cohen

It's Throwback Thursday, and I'm not sure if it's a takeoff on an old episode of Dr. Who or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Either way, it's a sci-fi return to 30+ years ago, and what I love most about time travel.

Today's subject is prompted by the "bone-chilling" 65-degree weather here in Florida, along with my good buddy, Glen Clark.

First, it's true that the longer you live in a warm climate like Florida, the thinner your blood gets. The cold weather this week hardly compares to growing up in Ohio, and the cold up north today. Nevertheless, when it drops below seventy, I start pulling out the sweatshirts and flannel! 

Second, in the process of moving many years ago, Glen was cleaning out his garage and found the two sweatshirts on the right. He sent them to me, along with a few other souvenirs of time gone by, and they went on a shelf in my closet. The white shirt still had the tags on it. When I pulled them out to wear yesterday, it really felt like time travel back to the 90s, when we started Hasselblad University.

I know I've written about this before, but here's the short backstory: I was president of Hasselblad USA from 1987 to 1999. Sometime in '93, I came into the office one morning furious. Mamiya America, our number one competitor, had done an ad congratulating Annie Leibovitz on her new exhibit. It didn't come out and say she was a Mamiya shooter, but the inference was obvious. So, I started thinking - what could we do that would pull together all the great names, then using Hasselblad.

The answer was to launch two different weekend workshop programs, one in Santa Barbara at Brooks Institute, the other in Rochester at RIT. The instructors at both locations were among the finest and most recognized artists in imaging. However, the program was a dismal failure. Nobody wanted to go to Rochester, although there was plenty of interest in Santa Barbara; we underestimated the popularity the weekend before Labor Day. Room rates were absurd. In the end, we quietly canceled both workshops.

But, this is where the expression about a "silver lining" comes into play. The Hasselblad University logo, designed by our ad agency, Kalmar Ad/Marketing, won a couple of awards. It later became the brand symbol for everything we did in education, which then evolved into road shows with 3-4 speakers and 4-6 cities per series. It also became home for Tony Corbell, who joined us as the first and only Dean of Hasselblad University.

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The Hasselblad Sales and Service Team in 1994 with H.U. programs in the booth each day.

It's Throwback Thursday, and I can't think of a better way to wander down one path of Memory Lane of my career than to think about those incredible days at Hasselblad. We worked hard and played hard and those days remain some of my very best memories.

Take the time today and look back on some chapter of your career - it's a terrific experience to look at where you are today by appreciating your roots and everything you learned along the way.

Happy Throwback Thursday!