The life, death and re-birth of Polaroid

In the 1960’s Polaroid cameras were the latest things. The cutting edge. They were born of a time when it took a week or more to get a role of film developed. They provided instant gratification – instant photographic art. As time went by photomats popped up on every corner and the era of the 1hr photo arrived. Polaroid started to fade. As the century changed; digital photography was everywhere and time was running short for all film formats – especially Polaroid.

Two years ago the Polaroid factory closed up shop in Denmark. Most people didn’t give it a passing thought. But, some of us shed a tear to a passing artistic era. There was something immediate about Polaroid – there was also permanence to it. You couldn’t slide the images into Photoshop and boost the contrast, tweak the colors and fix that blown out highlight. Forget all that you couldn’t even enlarge them. There was a simple beauty to their faded colors, soft focus and all over the map results.

When the factory closed up shop I heard of a NYC based shooter who bought 400 boxes of film. But that doesn’t even come close to what the guys behind The Impossible Project did – they bought the Polaroid factory! They’ve decided to re-invent Polaroid film – figure out a way to make the film affordable and start re-selling the stuff. They’ve also given themselves a time limit, so you can go over to their website and see how much time they have left to get us all shooting again (as I write this they have 7,746,000 seconds to go…)

I can’t wait to see what they come up with. I love Polaroid, I love its instantaneous qualities and its fleeting sense of permanence. In an instant you get a permanent, non-modifiable version of your image. The irony is of course that the shots themselves are not archival and fade to nothingness in a couple of years. It’s a strange balance that shoots to the heart of what I love about art. Everything fades so you better stop and take it all in when you can.

Here are some of my favorite Polaroid images from a couple of years ago – before I ran out of film… please note that these images have been restored to what they were at the time of shooting. I debated long and hard as to how I wanted to present these photographs – full of color as when they first developed or as the faded images they are now. In the end I will remember these images how I remember Polaroid – as they came out of the camera - crisp bright and full of life - not as a distant memory as they are now.