Iconic Polaroid photography is finding eternal life through creativity, community and digital technology.
You can judge a life by its afterlife—how it is remembered by others. The life of a product is no different. Polaroid is one of these memorable ones; years after it was innovative, their instant film lived on as an art form. Now that it will be laid to rest at the end of this year, legions of devotees-often young people who love the instantly gratifying kitsch- have already begun memorializing the iconic medium.
Take Polaroid enthusiast community Polanoid, which is experiencing a surge of new memberships. Rather than lament the end of an era, the Swiss site has issued a rallying cry for submissions, encouraging users to “shoot like crazy” and “search the old albums of your parents, grandparents” as they strive to “build the biggest Polaroid picture collection of the planet.” Judging by the community’s rapidly growing gallery, the people are listening.
Others have sought to go beyond archiving, like Rod Hawking. The Chicago-based artist not only created a tribute installation Polared, consisting of 500 red snapshots behind a Polaroid camera display (see it on Flickr), he also designed two print posters (our personal favorite depicting Polaroid inventor Edwin Land) available for sale at cause HQ, SavePolaroid.
If you need proof that it’s the young creative class behind this movement, look no further than Poladroid. This free Mac application (Windows coming soon!) turns any digital photo into a virtual Polaroid. Not only does it achieve the film’s color over-saturation effect, it places otherwise bland and borderless images in the trademark white frame. Photographers can then share their creations on the official Flickr group.
And last but not least, there’s the Polarshot iPhone app, which perfectly leverages the phone’s accelerometer feature. It lets you take a polaroid-style photo, scribble on top of it with paint tools, then “shake it” clean.
It’s worth noting that most of these memorials are digital, yet digital is what essentially killed the Polaroid. Perhaps this is simply evidence of our “remix” or “read/write” culture that embraces and evolves ideas and objects from the past. It’s not dead, just reincarnated.
