Going Gaga

Here is the news:

"Lady Gaga named Creative Director for Speciality Line of Polaroid Imaging Products"

More subdued, was the uncovering of the new instant film cameras designed by Polaroid, referencing the old One-Step design, but this time with fake wood finish. Fake wood! I need one! (Not really). Also announced was a new digital camera with a built-in printer, allowing the best of the old and the new. Possibly.

Gaga's statement in the press release seems to emphasise the digital side of things, which suggests to me that she's going to be all about branding on new digital devices. Although, canny marketeer that she is, I can imagine she would want to be in with whatever seems trendy/popular. I wouldn't necessarily worry too much about an iconic company getting in to bed with the latest thing.

Polaroid's statement in the same release seems somewhat more alarming:

The partnership with Lady Gaga is the most recent in a string of partner announcements by PLR IP Holdings, LLC (PLR), the new owner of the Polaroid brand. In the past six months, PLR has assembled a family of Polaroid partners for product development, marketing distribution and licensing. Building upon Polaroid's rich history, the Polaroid partner network will support fans and users of classic Polaroid products and deliver new Polaroid products to a new generation of Polaroid customers while staying true to Polaroid's long-standing values of fun and simplicity.

(my emphasis)

What makes me uneasy about all this is very well put by @jeffrawdon over at his Existentialmonkey blog. (Such a good blog post, that I've scrapped my first draft of this one, because he put it so much better than my ramblings)

But I do want to emphasise a few points, because they can't be emphasised enough. Polaroid is an iconic brand, based on iconic products and ideas. Edwin Land's astonishing development of instant photography, was mainly due to the implementation of hard work, passion for photography, experimentation, and magic. The instant, peel apart films were his first miracle, and the integral packs and design of the SX-70 were his crowning achievement in my eyes. Seriously, the SX-70 system is just astonishing.

Sadly the company lost focus, didn't modernise, and seemingly went the way of other well loved companies who couldn't keep up. Various bad things happened to the company, and all it ended up as was just the name associated with the iconic products of the past, tainted with mediocre products of the present. And when every modern camera creates an image you can see instantly, who cares about smelly, messy chemical processes that are expensive with large factories to run? So the new Polaroid owners shuttered the factories and took apart the machines.

Except...

But that's not the whole story. Again to summarise (read an excellent version on Wired UK's site): the Polaroid factory in the Netherlands is about to close, an incredibly enthusiastic Austrian called Florian Kaps persuades the factory manager Andre Bosman to keep it running, and the pair set up The Impossible Project to restart the factory and create new film for Polaroid lovers.

In parallel, a number of enthusiasts led by Sean Tubridy and Dave Bias, along with Anne Bowerman and others, became Polaroid evangelists, setting up the website Save Polaroid to do just that. Anne and Dave then became a part of the Impossible Project as the American wing of PolaPremium, a venture set up by Kaps to sell remaining stocks of old Polaroid film, raise money for the new film, and sell that when it comes out this year. Next month should see the opening of the New York store.

All this activity is absolutely incredible, and The Impossible Project is built up by people passionate about Polaroid photography, a photography made of chemicals and magic. But magic isn't going to pay the bills, and the film needs to be bought in sufficient quantities to make the enterprise a worthwhile one. One way to ensure that's a reasonable possibility is to build up the buzz needed to seep into public consciousness, so that people know that something is coming, that instant film is NOT dead. And the Impossible Project has done an incredible job of this! (See their site of last year's activity to find links to world media coverage)

This has woken the sleeping Polaroid to the awareness that people are still wanting to use the products with its name on! Except, they're only wanting to use the OLD products, the ones they no longer make, THE ONES THEY NO LONGER MAKE ANY MONEY ON. Well that can't be right for the owner of an iconic name, to have someone else make money off the back of it. Even if it was something they had thrown away. So they make will new instant cameras! Hooray!

And then they will announce those cameras without any reference to the people who are actually making the film those cameras will run on. Without mentioning that the passion of Florian, André, Anne and Dave, as well as all those at the factory which Polaroid had actually closed, working to make The Impossible Project possible is what is getting those cameras made in the first place.

Nicely played, Polaroid.

Lady Gaga almost seems like a diversion. We don't know what (if at all) her involvement will be in the new Polaroid cameras. I'm not really in her target audience. I would be more in line for a Medeski Martin and Wood instant camera (holy crap, that's a great idea!). In fact, I would be much more the target audience for The Impossible Project's planned camera. I don't know any details about it, but I know I want one.

Which again goes back to the passion about the process of instant photography. It's not trendy. It's not a trend. Lady Gaga is trendy, but unless she's adaptable, she won't have the longevity of the Madonna brand. Whereas people like me want to keep making images with this unique technology, for the pleasure of the process and the results, and want to keep doing it for years to come. Hopefully some of the Gaga fans will get drawn in and this is what turns them into photographers. Who knows? How many Spice Girls fans got turned onto photography through the SpiceCam?

Hopefully Polaroid's new-found interest in instant film won't overload The Impossible Project, but will allow it to grow and develop. Selling more film should be a good thing, as long as there's enough for me. So I'm going to keep one eye on Polaroid's actions, but not my serious eye, as that is looking straight at the more important work of The Impossible Project.

Florian, Andre, Sean, Anne, Dave and the others: keep doing what you're doing. There's a passionate community that cares desperately about your work, and who will look back years in the future at the photographs taken with the film you are making happen. And who will look up and as one say the now immortal words of the spirit of Edwin Land on Twitter:

@edwinland: "Who the hell is Lady Gaga?"

EDIT: 09 Jan 2010 - added info about Sean Tubridy in origins of "Save Polaroid" site.