Illustration: Jordan Kay msjordankay.com Photograph: Benedikte Olsen
Imagine being a child again, and watching an image gradually appear out of the murky depths of a deceptively innocent little square of black. Imagine holding that image in your hand, a physical manifestation of a scene you can still see, a souvenir for a memory that is still being formed. Imagine the joy of possessing a photo that takes a second to capture, a moment to develop and a lifetime to treasure. Now imagine collecting your developed photographs a week after the images were taken; it doesn’t quite compare, does it? The Polaroid is your vessel to the unparalleled photographic experience that comes from instant cameras. For a child, and the less technologically aware amongst us, Polaroids are a miracle. Edwin Land, the late scientist and industrialist, will forever be remembered as the inventor of the first instant camera: the Polaroid. Inspired by his three year old daughter’s endearingly childish yet wonderfully avant-garde question; ‘Why can’t I see them now?’ regarding the pictures he had just taken of her, his invention, which allows users to watch photos develop before their very eyes, created a revolution in photography. Land’s early vision for the Polaroid respected his daughter’s wish, by providing its users with spontaneous and instant photographs. But Polaroid is more than just instant photography. Since the launch of Polaroid’s first instant camera in November 1948, the Polaroid
has provided fashion photographers, forensic teams, photojournalists, location photographers, amateurs and artists across the globe with a camera that both processes and develops photos that appear as if by magic. Indeed, Land himself called the SX-70 model ‘the magic camera’. Sean Turbridy, the founder of SavePolaroid. com eloquently sums up the beauty of instant photography; ‘For me, watching a Polaroid picture develop is like watching a memory form right before your eyes,’ and he is far from alone in his passion for Polaroid. Books, art pieces, websites, fan pages, film citations and the line ‘Shake it like a Polaroid picture’ from Outkast’s song ‘Hey Ya!’ prove that the Polaroid has become a beloved fixture in modern society. Clearly, those iconic white rimmed squares have gained Polaroid a cult following. However, the following clearly is not significant enough. In February 2008, Polaroid announced that it would stop manufacturing instant film, close down its factories, and produce the last batch of instant film in June 2008. Despite peaking in popularity in 1991, Polaroid filed for bankruptcy in 2001 in wake of the digital photograph revolution. Cheap, accessible and easy to use, digital cameras have signed the death warrant for Polaroid. In today’s society, instant photos do not perform in the ways we want them to; we cannot connect our vintage 1972 leather-panelled SX-70 to our
computer via a USB cable, nor can we send the image to friends at the click of a button, and forget waiting 60 seconds for our image to appear, ‘instant’ is not instant enough anymore. Industries, such as modelling agencies, that used to rely so heavily upon instant cameras for photo shoots and lighting tests have gone digital, and Polaroid have suddenly found itself painfully out of touch with the modern world. And so the inevitable has happened; Polaroid has broken from its past and reinvented itself as a leading global Consumer Electronics and Digital Imaging company. One only has to browse the internet to understand to what extent loyal devotees of instant film oppose this switch; countless articles, petitions, websites and blogs are dedicated to lamenting the end of Polaroid, and the price of the last batches of instant film has risen dramatically. Exhibitions such as ‘Polaroid: EXP.09.10.09’ which ran from October 9th to November 28th 2009 at the Atlas Gallery in London and ‘Shake It: An Instant History of the Polaroid’, running from 6 October - 13 December 2009 at the Pump House Gallery in London have been set up in honour of the Polaroid. ‘Shake It’ includes work by such artists as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Nobuyoshi Araki and Rut Blees Luxemburg, amateurs and enthusiasts, and Polaroids from professions including forensics, fashion, film, archaeology and medicine.
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