Exhibit A: Death Valley Junction
Exhibit B: Death Valley Junction 2:
Exhibit C: Alcatraz
Exhibit D: Roy's, Amboy, CA
I enjoy Polaroids because they satisfy the video part of me that likes the instant gratification. The camera makes that awkward sound and spits out the photograph and you wait your two minutes and slowly watch the photograph come alive. The only thing more magical than that is placing a photograph in the developer and waiting for an image to take its first breath in a dark, red lit room.
At the end of the day I'll have my 120 rolls snug in my pocket anxiously waiting for their magical birth in the darkroom, but I'll also have these Polaroids which are little treasures of the day. Though their image may not be superior to medium format or 35mm film, I tend to value them far more. I keep my negatives safe and I can always make more prints, but this is the only Polaroid I'll ever have no matter what. Even though I have a more permanent and nearly identical record in the tiny grains that come alive through gelatin, I have a pure satisfaction in knowing that this is the only Polaroid. They are truly precious in that way and even more precious now that Polaroid isn't going to make instant film anymore.
I used to buy Polaroids when they came in a 5 pack at Costco. You could get 50 photographs for $45 which is pretty good. After a very upsetting talk with a Costco employee I found out that Costco doesn't even sell the Polaroid film anymore. In fact, they don't sell any film. Period. I understand the convenience of digital photography, but I don't understand the lack of something physical.
Will we still have family photo albums? When we e-mail photos of our children's birthday parties to relatives, will they print them out and put them on the refrigerator? I'm sorry, but those digital prints that you get at Rite Aid or Walgreens or where ever the average American gets their digital prints just aren't as good. Digital photographs take up hard drive space on a computer or still in the camera and can be so easily lost or carelessly deleted. They become so much more expendable and make us bad editors. How many of you have taken a digital photo, looked at it on the screen and said, nah, and deleted it right then and there, or have run out of room on a memory card and flipped though and deleted photos for the sake of more room?
I know film isn't cheap, and polaroids aren't either. But there's something so much more permanent, and so much more special there that I wish more people had the patience and appreciation for.
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