I thought this was just a whim on the part of a product designer, a few months ago: a little digicam built to resemble Instagram’s logo. I did a gag post about it then, then another when the idea gathered a little momentum. And this week Wired is reporting that it’s moved a few steps closer to becoming an actual product. The folks building this thing want to use Zink, the technology (“zero ink”) created at Polaroid in the years surrounding the first bankruptcy, then spun off as an independent company and licensed back to Polaroid’s new owners. It’s the same method of image-making deployed in the Polaroid GL10 printer and a few other products.
It’s a weird product: the point of Instagram (to me, anyway) is that it’s integrated with your phone, and this isn’t. That said, it is also a pleasant little object, and heaven knows that I believe in the value of a physical printed photograph. Who’s to argue?
Probably about 1959.
Polaroid, once a sponsor of Paar’s show, used to have him do live demonstrations on the air, to show off their technology without a safety net. This is a still from YouTube’s particularly antic example, mock-sabotaged by madman Jerry Lewis.
Recently, my friends at The Impossible Project arranged to offer a special slipcased edition of INSTANT: THE STORY OF POLAROID. The book is paired with a second smaller volume, Faces of Polaroid, for which I ran around New England photographing the people who, a generation ago, made this technology. (The photos were shot with an SX-70, on Impossible’s black-and-white film.) Limited in number, gorgeous in production, that special edition is available for presale only through Impossible’s Website, and it is a handsome, handsome thing, thanks to the designers at Princeton Architectural Press. (The slipcase is based on a rainbow-pattern pack-film box from the late sixties, designed by Paul Giambarba for Bill Field.) 
It really does celebrate this medium in a way that honors it: Gorgeous design and high production standards were a hallmark of all the printed matter Polaroid produced. I’m a little giddy just looking at this thing, and I hope you all like it as much as I do.
Preorder page is up, and I’ll put a link on the homepage too.
Canada has a knack for offering good things slightly before the United States does (universal health care, women’s suffrage, Catherine O’Hara). And now INSTANT: here’s a lovely story in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national paper of record. Pleasant interview, a reporter named Kate Taylor who took time to double-check the complex bits (and thus has them right), and a stylebook that still requires “Mr” before names in arts stories, a convention that’s softened even at the New York Times. Couldn’t ask for a nicer introduction to the Great White North.
Photograph by Mikael Kennedy, from the series “Passport to Trespass”/Courtesy Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art. Link to source appears at left.
Nice post today about Mikael Kennedy, whose Polaroid photography accompanies T.C. Boyle’s short story in this week’s New Yorker. He’s got some nice things to say about the instant photo as an object: “The photograph is present in the moment in which is was taken, we held that image in our hands, the dirt from our fingers is embedded in the object.” Yep. I’d add that the very light that reflected off the subject made that picture: In an abstract way, camera and photo touched, even kissed. He adds that as a young broke artist, he used to sell blood to buy film, and you can’t get more devoted than that. Full post here.
From Library Journal: not the biggest audience in the world, but a solid trade publication, and god knows I have nothing but good things to say about career librarians. (No link to the review itself available; it’s subscription-only, like most trade pubs.) Reviewer Susan Hurst calls INSTANT “a quick and interesting read,” adding that it includes “some photos, though not nearly enough.” (Can’t say I entirely disagree, but of course she wasn’t the one writing the checks.) And the final verdict: “A well-written book that will bring back fond memories of instant photography for many readers. Recommended.” Who could ask for more?
BUY THE BOOK
Available in many bookstores, online and off-. Click the photo to order from my local, the Strand Book Store.
BUY THE OTHER BOOK
WATCH THE TRAILER
On Vimeo: click the image to view.
