Oct 17th, 2016, 09:58 AM

Polaroid: The Original Instant Gram

By Niha Reddy
Image Credit: Dark Room and Dearly
Instant photography is a welcome alternative in this like-based digital age

Somewhere on Harvard’s campus in 1937, a young Edwin H. Land discovered Polaroid polarizing polymer. Originally meant to be an anti-glare aid to car windshields and headlights, the company tried their hand at 3D film glasses, before arriving at the Polaroid Corporation we’re familiar with today.

On Christmas day 1943, Land and his family partook in the time honored tradition of taking holiday family photos. His 3-year-old daughter had spent the day enthralled in the joy of picture taking and was crushed to learn it would be weeks before she could see the developed photos, demanding to see them right away instead.

Land once famously said, “you can’t necessarily separate the important from the impossible.” It’s this exact sense of imagination and commitment to creation that made him a muse for Steve Jobs who in many ways modeled Apple after Polaroid Corporation. 

While others would dismiss such (then) unrealistic requests from a child, Land took hers seriously and thus began a three-year long journey towards the world’s first instant photography apparatus.

Image Credit: The Boston Globe

On February 21, 1947, Land debuted his "instant camera system" at the Optical Society of America's winter meeting. The image of him peeling back the film to reveal the photo he'd just taken landed on the front page of every newspaper the next morning. While photographers eagerly snapped pictures of Land and his instant print camera, he showed off photos he'd just taken of the photographers teasing, "now let me see your work." 

Polaroid originally marketed itself (through a $60-million-dollar advertising campaign, unheard of for that age and even now) as a practical investment for uses such as record keeping of household items for insurance purposes or as a visual record of properties while house hunting. Ironically, they’ve found their niche in the exact opposite realm. Today, people don’t buy Polaroid for its practicality. Technology has advanced in leaps and bounds since that 1990 advertising campaign so much so that there are far better and faster ways of accomplishing those and similar tasks.

Instead, we buy Polaroid because it’s slow. Because you can’t print off a few more copies. Because it’s not mass produced. Because you have to be really, really, extra sure before you take the picture. Because you can’t delete it, retake it or edit it later. We love Polaroid for the charm of all its inconveniences, despite living in an age where technology has all but abolished them.

Above all, perhaps the most important reason we love Polaroid is that provides respite from an often toxic, like-based culture. We upload, like, love, retweet, and favorite; caught in the cycle of artificial affection. We breathe life into a ritual that’s rooted in the exploitation of insecurity. Polaroid on the other hand has successfully protected its sense of intimacy. You take the picture in the moment, share it with those around you- a genuine connection that needs no digital validation.

Today, Polaroid has permeated our culture as much as it has our concept and demands of photography. It has found it's roots in art, history and culture while still incorporating itself into modern day lives. Artists such as Andy Warhol and Terry Richardson have all created art and film using Polaroid as the focal point. 

Andy Warhol left behind an archive of over 60,000 Polaroids. Image Credit: Andy Warhol Foundation
Andy Warhol's famous portraits of celebrities. Image Credit: Agonistica

Polaroid inspired exhibition at FEP. Image Credit: Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography

But it’s not all nostalgia for a simpler time. In fact, the highest selling age group for instant photography is the under 30 crowd, most of whom weren’t around for the original Polaroid boom.

Even when we shoot digital, we edit it to look analog. One could argue that’s exactly what Instagram is, a “digital Polaroid editing and sharing platform, despite Polaroid having their own called Polaroid Swing. We add filters that give our photos an already old feel. We juxtaposition laptops with reclaimed wood tables and borrow brand capital from the “those were the days” era.

Terry Richardson's "A Polaroid Story," a modern incarnation of Andy Warhol's portraits. Image Credit: A Polaroid Story

But tying the sentiment of nostalgia to a bygone time isn’t the only form of nostalgia. Tommy Stadlen, co-founder of Polaroid Swing remarked, "nostalgia doesn't have to be about the past, this idea that you can get nostalgic about moments you're currently in, that's what I've always felt with Polaroid."

The beautiful thing about a Polaroid is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Maybe your picture is a little out of focus, perhaps the colors aren’t as saturated as you expected. However the photo develops in the end, here, the imperfect is perfect.