Fading Image

Mark Roberts and Denise Rouleau are Minneapolis artists who are losing one of the favorite media: Polaroid instant photography film.

Earlier this month, Polaroid Corporation—which is owned by Minnesota-based Petters Group Worldwide announced that it would be discontinuing production of the instant film. Instead, the Massachusetts-headquartered company, which was reorganized after going bankrupt in 2001, will focus on digital photography equipment and flat-panel televisions.

For people who’ve grown up largely in the digital age, Polaroid film is perhaps all but forgotten. They may never even know it exists.

But we elderly types know Polaroid as one of the great American innovators of the mid-20th century. The name refers to founder Edwin Land’s original invention of polarizing filters.

But it’s the instant camera, which Land and Polaroid began to selling in the late 1940s, for which the company is most famous. Instead of sending your film to a developer, the film developed itself.
In the 1960s, Polaroid developed “pack film,” consisting of individual sheets that the camera “spat out” after each shot. Peel off the top “positive” layer, and the image would slowly and magically reveal itself.

As an art medium, Polaroid instant film came into its own in the 1970s, when the SX-70 camera, a fold-flat camera that ejected the color sheet and didn’t require any peeling—maybe just some flapping by the photographer (though that’s probably as necessary as a cigarette smoker smacking his newly purchased pack)—as the sheet came out of the camera and slowly and amazingly revealed its truths. The remarkable, distinctive color that Polaroid instant film renders has long been a huge part of its aesthetic appeal. 

You can see Mark and Denise’s Polaroid-based photography art on the walls of the fabulous La Belle Vie restaurant across Hennepin Avenue from the Walker Art Center, as well as the duo’s Web site. They particularly like to take a Polaroid photograph and blow it up to a 4-by-4-foot format, manipulating it via computer or other methods. (The film’s emulsion stays fairly soft for several days after a shoot, which allows people to smear it around it in various ways.)

Mark, who has been working with Polaroid film since the late ’70s, got his first whack a year ago, when Polaroid discontinued SX-70 film. He’s got thousands of dollars worth of Polaroid equipment. “I might as well tie it together and use it as an anchor,” he says sadly, adding that he’s gotten innumerable e-mails from artists and other Polaroid film fans sharing their stories and sorrows. Meanwhile, he, Denise, and thousands of others are scouring stores and the Internet in search of precious last packages of their beloved media.

It’s not just artists who love Polaroid film. According to an Associated Press article, scientists, architects, and physicians all have found Polaroid film useful in their work.

Many hope that some other company will produce Polaroid film under license. One rumored possibility is Fujifilm, which makes its own brands of instant film, though they’re not compatible with Polaroid equipment.

An e-mail to Polaroid’s media department got this response: “Polaroid is looking into alternative options that would allow certain film types to be manufactured and will be sure to notify customers should this become a reality.”

Mark and Denise, not to mention numerous artists (and other interested parties) worldwide, look forward to that notification. 

Me, I’m in mourning for another great brand of my youth. It was probably inevitable, given the rise of digital photography. But still.

UPDATE: I got word today (2/26) that ABC News is soliciting Polaroid images for a possible story by anchor Charles Gibson.