Polaroid Artistic TZ

Further to the Poladroid post, this is a good example of the crazy colours Artistic TZ produces. It looks like a painting (probably accentuated a bit by my using my SX-70 with its mouldy lens...)

Artistic TZ was made with expired chemicals by Polaroid, hence the unusual tones. It's also "manipulable" (you can push the developing emulsion around). It's lovely.

These are not the 'roids you're looking for...

The spirit of Edwin Land is alive and well! He is busy commenting on Polaroid-related tweets, wry and good-humoured. But if something is going to get him rattling his ghostly chains, it's Poladroids. Poladroid allows you to input a digital picture, and with a recorded Polaroid ejection sound, out comes the print which slowly develops before your eyes, on your computer. So far so fun. The pictures have a grubby, fingerprinted frame, and the the image itself looks nothing like a real Pola: colours are weird (not Artistic TZ weird, but artificial), and there's a strong, square vignetting that I've not seen on any of my real Polaroids. They have the appearance of someone's memory of how Polaroid images look - indeed before I got back into the instant saddle, I thought they were quite cool. But I never thought they were actual Polas.

Others think otherwise and Mr Land responds...

"Edwin Land channels his inner incredible hulk whenever he sees a "droid" or someone raving about how real they look. Grrrrr."

"Oh @KatieHammel "poladroids" are not cool. You know what's cool? Shooting real film. 35mm, medium format, and yes, POLAROID."

"Those are NOT POLAROIDS!!!!! @danieleagee NEW Photoblog: Polaroids! http://bit.ly/AXJx6"

"your "classic polaroid" @coloroflifeinc is a fake polaroid so how is that "classic"?"

I think we can see what's going on here. People discover Poladroid (fair enough), they play with it (it's fun) they post the results calling them real Polaroids. Edwin Land's eyes flash green and his shirt starts ripping. He's not alone. There are many Polaroid groups on Flickr, and all of them say "No fake Polaroids!". Polaroid can be an expensive pursuit these days, especially as the film gets harder to find (although PolaPremium will sort you out with a smile and awesome packing tape), but there are many people out there who are deeply passionate about the aesthetic of instant film who get worked up by this digital imposter, marching around pretending to be the real thing. A bit like the scene in the first Naked Gun movie where Frank Drebbin has stolen the opera singer's clothes and is butchering the American National Anthem on television, but with the singer's name under his image on TV. The tied up singer watches, weeping.

But hey, the kids like it and all they need is a bit of education and redirecting to understand the difference. Let them know you can still get cameras on ebay and film from PolaPremium, and I bet they'd dive straight in.

And then Newsweek decides to get involved...

It's a shame that the hook of the article (called "Polaroid Lives!") is about how Poladroids are the replacement for Polaroid as the author has some nice things to say about the experience of taking a Polaroid. I especially like:

"The Polaroid serves as a palpable re-minder of the pleasures of good old-fashioned remembering... it materializes in real time, making it the only form of photography that transcends mere documentation to become part of the moment it's meant to preserve; we blow out the candles, look at the Polaroid, and archive both experiences as one."

That's definitely a big part of instant photography for me - I get great pleasure from the actual taking of pictures, and to have the results as a print in your hand moments later, rather than looking on the back of screen, adds a wonderful stage to the process. And then there's the aesthetic experience of the images, whether in your hand or on the screen, or as a print, and this is where his argument leaks. Poladroids come out making a Polaroid sound, they have a Time-Zero frame, they fade in to develop. But they don't look like the real thing, and he says that as Polaroid is over and obsolete, this is as good. This is the replacement. This is the new Polaroid. Not really. Maybe if I could hold my iMac up, take a picture with its iSight camera and have a physical Poladroid drop out the bottom...

He mentions the iPhone app ShakeItPhoto (which I rave about in my Digital Instant post), and I may appear to be hypocritical here, but I feel they are different things. Where Poladroid takes your pre-existing images, and turns them into a "nostalgic" simulacrum of a Polaroid, you actually take a single picture with ShakeIt and wait for it to appear. Rather than snapping away and sorting it out later, it forces you to stop, compose with your fixed focal length, and vitally wait before you move on. And while the frame is a type 80 square, the image is contrasty and saturated but not distorted in its colours. It's a very different experience.

But what's more important is that Polaroid does live, but not as a digital fake. An amazing range of people are creating an amazing range of images using this "dead" and "obsolete" format. One point that has angered the Polaroid people (myself included) is the poor research in the article that leads to this statement: "A group called the Impossible Project even leased an abandoned Polaroid factory in the Netherlands and recruited a team of former Polaroid technicians to invent a new instant film". Why the past tense? He makes it sound as if the Impossible Project was indeed impossible, and was abandoned.

And Time (which featured Edwin Land on its cover in 1972) has an article about the Project this month. A very encouraging article indeed.

Back to EdwinLand: "Hey @Newsweek THIS is how you write an article about #polaroid film (Time wins!)"

NEW film for Polaroid cameras by Christmas. Oh my.

Polaroid Lives!