Rhiannon Adam, a Polaroid fan with over 200 Polaroid cameras, set up Save-Polaroid.com, a European spinoff of Savepolaroid.com but as a result, the site crashed due to an overwhelming amount of interest. While Adams is working on getting her site back up so she can continue to campaign, she is also working on a book about Polaroids. Here she tells us about what Polaroids mean to her.
I was a few days old when I first encountered Polaroid, a formative moment though I didn’t realise it at the time. It’s a picture of me, in a pub, on my Dad’s knee, next to my gran,. My mum’s is pouring a pint into my mouth. My face is soaked with beer and my arms are up in protest. I think it’s officially my first party shot. Somehow it wouldn’t have seemed right to have had that image developed in the local chemist by a disapproving photo-lab technician.
"As I would later learn, Polaroid is the chosen medium for candid moments, illegal activity and secret rendezvous."
I love Polaroids because they can never be recreated. Each one is a one-off, like a painting. A Polaroid image really does, to use their naff slogan- ‘capture the moment’. There is no processing, no one else is involved in its production. It’s only the photographer who decides what is in shot- there is no editing, no post-production.
It is what it is.
I think it’s the test of a good eye. If you can shoot an image ‘raw’ without relying on special effects, and if your composition works, then you can photograph anything. Each one is expensive, so you are forced to choose your subject. These special remits of Polaroid have being thrown by the wayside since the advent of Photoshop and the ubiquity of digital.
When I look at a Polaroid I can tell whether it was shot on a hot day, a cold day, and whether it was windy. A Polaroid is a product of the time it was taken. The image the picture conjures is not limited to the scene visible in the photograph itself. A Polaroid is an experience. If you’re really lucky there’ll be a smear in the corner, or a dirty fingerprint.
That Polaroid is a finished object, born into the place and time that it was taken, each a piece of evidence or a relic.
Polaroid was founded on a marriage between technology and art- and until its recent meltdown, has been at the forefront of artistic and scientific innovation. Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder was passionate about photography- and he had lofty ambitions. Under his command, Polaroid went from strength to strength- it was down to him that we did emulsion lifts, image transfers, cartridge manipulations, and SX-70 adaptations. He realised that Polaroid was special and unique, that every Polaroid is a collaboration between the photographer and the film itself, its advent was really the advent of a plethora of new techniques in art. Recently, I took some pictures of my gran- I used expired SX-70. I chose that film because I wanted my pictures to ooze the essence of old-age. The expired effects of the film were unpredictable but added something to each of those images. Each image treads that fine line between art and photography, science and luck.
Polaroid may be less hip than Lomography, more expensive than 35mm, and less throwaway than digital- and thank God for that.
Polaroid photography can’t really be compared to any of these other forms of image taking. It has its own set of rules and quirks, which mean that it is itself a unique art form.
It should be saved because of everything that it represents, everything it can be and has been. It should be saved for all those memories recorded, and the moments that are yet to happen. Each Polaroid is a little secret between me and you, it’s a nudge and a wink, and really something special.