Impossible Polaroid

In a delicious turn of events, the tanking economy made possible the resurrection of the late, great Polaroid instant camera, reports Eric Felton in the Wall Street Journal (3/26/10). The last plant making Polaroid instant film — outside Amsterdam of all places — was set to be demolished, and its machinery dismantled. But because of the economy, plans to bulldoze the factory and construct a new building were cancelled. And, as fate would have it, Florian Kaps, a Polaroid enthusiast, happened to catch wind of this, um, development, the day before workers were to begin destroying the machinery.

Florian, who had been selling remaining stock of Polaroid film online, managed to delay the destruction for a week while he raised enough funds "to lease the factory, acquire the equipment and get to work." Even though Florian had the equipment, he still didn’t have the requisite chemicals for that very special Polaroid process. However, working with former Polaroid engineers, a new formulation was developed using readily available ingredients and "a sepia-tinted black-and-white film usable in the standard old Polaroid cameras" is now available online, at theimpossibleproject dot-com. Color film is promised this summer.

The remaining question is whether there’s a sufficient market for Polaroid film, which once commanded the instant-pictures category, but fell on hard times with the advent of digital cameras. Still, some people — artists largely — have remained enchanted by "the film’s otherworldly effects and quirky unpredictability." Some hobbyists meanwhile "were hooked on the strange, ethereal lull as the image seeps into existence before one’s eyes." It’s not likely that Polaroid’s revival will put a "dent in the digital juggernaut," but, as Eric Felton notes, it’s a happy moment "when the market increases our choices instead of narrowing them."