Polaroid jumped into the digital sharing-happy world last week with the Cube, a new WiFi-enabled camera that uploads images directly to the Web. It's a break with Polaroid's legacy of instant printing—rather than instant uploads.
The Cube would be cold comfort to Polaroid fans still mourning the company's decision to stop making film for its iconic cameras, but for The Impossible Project. The multinational company, which purchased the last factory to making Polaroid instant film in 2008, wants to keep the old days alive.
As the only company in the world producing instant film (reinvented from scratch) for classic Polaroid cameras, The Impossible Project caters to photographers who cherish the feeling of holding images in their hands and watching them develop before their eyes.
When Polaroid formally announced its abandonment of the instant film business, Florian 'Doc' Kaps and André Bosman bought the last factory that made Polaroid instant film, located in The Netherlands, and recruited 10 Polaroid employees to help revive the endangered art form.
It worked. Since its creation, The Impossible Project has saved more than 200 million cameras from becoming useless. The company has created more than 30 unique film stocks and offers refurbishing services for old cameras such as the classic SX70. Last year, the company sold 1 million film packs, and had roughly 200,000 users. According to Oskar Smolokowski, CEO of The Impossible Project, the company is growing 20% to 30% every year.
It's no surprise that the company is doing well. Just look at Instagram, which gained its early popularity from its old-time faux-Polaroid filters. There's a market for nostalgia. Photographer Shelbie Dimond, for example, says she loves Polaroid pictures because they have a dream-like, “milky” feeling to them.
Photographers are enamored with analog instant cameras because they provide artistic constraints and add a personal touch to images. Dimond appreciates that instant film “gives you a sense of honesty in that you only have a certain amount of frames to shoot.” With Impossible Project film, photographers get eight shots in one package, which forces them to truly consider what they want to capture before pressing the trigger. “It's about saying no sometimes, which is a fun challenge compared to always having your phone with you and snapping away,”explained Smolokowski.
There's still a special magic to watching a Polaroid develop right before your eyes. Richard Spicer, a portrait photographer from Sacramento, loves using instant film with his clients because the photographs bring people together. After each photo shoot, Spicer sits with his clients around a table passing around the physical prints. “Typically these are people I don't know very well, but you connect with someone while photographing them, and then the process comes full circle when you sit down and look at the images together,” said Spicer. “Instant film gives you a print right away, something you can hold in your hands and share with someone else. It's tangible, and this makes all of the difference in the world.”
Photograph taken with Impossible Film by Richard Spicer
To bridge digital and analog worlds, The Impossible Project recently created the Instant Lab, a smartphone attachment that transforms digital images into classic instant photos by functioning as a miniature darkroom. The phone burns an image directly onto film, which is then printed right away. “We take thousands of photos with [phone] cameras but never end up looking at them,” said Smolokowski. “The idea behind Instant Lab is you can take the most important images to you , free them from the phone screen, and let them live in the real world.”
Unexpected communities have emerged from the business. When the company was started, the team initially predicted their customers would be former owners of Polaroid instant analog cameras. Surprisingly, the people most excited about The Impossible Project are part of a younger demographic, around 16-25 years old. The community is mostly online, with fan groups on Flickr and Facebook. There is also an official Impossible Project blog, which elevates the work of global photographers who use its film. Now, the company is embarking on a U.S. road trip to meet with photography stores and its fans. “The beauty of this [company] is the community that's created around it, we're really lucky to have a group of passionate users in Europe and the States,” said Smolokowski.
Smolokowski loves new technologies but also believes it's important to have other outlets that allow us to slow down and enjoy one thing at a time. “The digital side of photography is like air — it's become part of us because it helps us remember things,” said Smolokowski. “But when you take a photograph with our film, it really has to be about more than just recording stuff...instant photography should have never really died.”
