Our World, Shaken

The Death of the Polaroid as We Know It Reveals Itself as an Unhappy Development

Scientists tell us that about 90 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct, so it should not be surprising that the laws of nature also apply to technology.

But we are still sad.

Polaroid instant film, the little white-bordered photo shards of our American lives for half a century, ceased production last month, according to the company. The fabled 10-packs of film already on shelves might take six months, perhaps a year, to sell out. Then, it's the way of the dodo bird.

Sigh.

You woke up one day and Polaroids were just there, like they had been waiting for some doofus to get around to inventing them -- like television, like Google. (And just like those, nobody at the dinner table can ever explain, really, how the contraptions actually work.)

In 1948 Polaroid unveiled its Model 95 camera and Type 40 film. For the first time in history, you could take a picture and have it in your hand a minute later. More than a million packs of film were on the shelves in the first two years; more than a million cameras in six years.

By 1963 there were 5 million cameras and who knows how much film. There were a gazillion variations of both. The Model 80 Highlander, the Winklight 250, the Model 900m, the Automatic 100, 101, 102 -- and we haven't even gotten to the Swinger yet.

The Swinger! Who can forget, man, 1965! "The Sound of Music," Malcolm X, the first U.S. combat troops in 'Nam, "Like a Rolling Stone." The Swinger sold 4 million units in two years. It was the hip new thing. It was photography's "White Album."

The Polaroid -- the camera manufacturer and its instant film were synonymous -- became part of the fabric of every family gathering, holiday, vacation and, er, other kinds of interpersonal documentation. (In writing "The Joy of Sex," Alex Comfort took Polaroids of himself and a lady friend in various positions for artists to then sketch for publication.)

But it's the childhood moments that became universal. A late summer afternoon, cooling, the shadows coming on; tanned, you feel the heat emanating from your body -- a good feeling, safe, happy. Your dad comes over, puts that boxy camera to his face, the soft ringed rubber over the extended body, and he presses the red button -- gadjiiitttt -- and the film emerges. Lemmee do it, Dad! Lemmee! The white plastic cardlike thing in the hand, kind of wet, you shake it -- thacka thacka thack -- peel it apart and see an image of your goofy face emerge from the blackness.

Sure, the colors were off as often as not. Sure, there were streaks. That was the beauty of the thing. It produced an instant artifact. They were the most spontaneous images ever recorded. You were never sure how it was going to turn out.

By the early 1970s, the Polaroid was ubiquitous. Andy Warhol and others used them for art. Cops discovered they were of great help at crime scenes. Casting directors found them indispensable.

There was the SX-70, the instant camera. No more wet film. The camera just spit out a print, right in front of you. You didn't have to shake it dry, though people would continue to do so for years. James Garner and Mariette Hartley, those witty television commercials, she was always giggling. "The simplest camera you ever used," Garner assured us.

"It's just iconic," says Dave Bias, a graphic designer in New York who co-founded SavePolaroid.com early last year when the company announced it was going to phase out instant film. (The name of the site is a reference to instant film, not the manufacturer.) The site has registered more than 250,000 unique visitors, he says. More than 500 people have taken Polaroid pictures of themselves and sent in stories of why they love the film.

A woman who identifies herself as "Cait" writes that she began using a Polaroid after her husband was murdered in 2004. "My biggest fear by far was that I would forget. Not the big things, but all those little moments that go toward the building of a life. I was the sole caretaker of a decade of memories. What if I lost them? What had I already forgotten?"

Artists still use Polaroid photos.

"You cannot digitally alter it later. You can't work it in a darkroom. You have to get your image in the camera. No lenses. Your tool set is very small. You really have to learn to compose," says Los Angeles photographer Tod Brilliant, who works almost solely with the medium.

Today, is there anybody in this great land who has not held a Polaroid instant print? Shoe boxes in a closet, pictures spilling out, faces from a forgotten Christmas, an awkward birthday party, the day you pulled your first tooth, your mother at Easter -- a month before she died, you remember.

Yes, we know Fuji is still making some instant film.

Yes, we know that Polaroid has a new gizmo, the PoGo, that can instantly print pictures from a cellphone. "Two hundred billion images a year captured on cellphones," says Jon Pollock, Polaroid's vice president of digital imaging. What a market that would be, he's saying, if the company could capture even a fraction of those.

And yes, we know that digital cameras show a picture the instant you take it. But you can't hold that photo. You don't watch it develop right before your eyes, a bit of chemical magic.

Polaroid's instant film was not the photographic equivalent of the eight-track, or vinyl records, or the Hula Hoop, for that matter. It was not technology that got outdated. It was part of who we were in the second half of the 20th century, something we had that got left behind. Something to be missed.

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Tod Brilliant, whose Polaroids are featured with this story, lives in Sonoma County, Calif., and works in Los Angeles. To learn more about his work, visit www.juneten.com.