NPR Looks at Polaroid
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For someone who hasn’t taken a Polaroid in ages, I’m surprising myself by how much I’m reading (and writing) about their decision to abandon instant film. A couple days ago, NPR had a story on All Things Considered about the end of the Polaroid, interviewing none other than the legendary Chuck Close, who reveals that every picture he’s ever taken (practically) has been a Polaroid, and every painting he’s ever made has been made from a Polaroid. Close sums the situation up pretty well. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do,” he says.
For a second they talk to some idiot from Polaroid who says that the company’s goal is to focus on bringing the “magic of Polaroid” to digital photography, perhaps with some kind of super potrable photo printer, as if anyone would have that much of a use for one. I immediately think of all the ink I would fly through if I printed every digital picture I snapped without thinking; it sounds to me that Polaroid has something of a fundamental misunderstanding of what digital photography is all about.
The greatest irony of all this though, hinted at but not really explored in the NPR story, is that the onset of digital pushed Polaroid out of the realm of mass consumption and into the domain of the artist. Instead of cornering a niche market with a stable (albeit small) amount of demand, Polaroid would rather chase after the opportunity they missed a decade by attempting to apply an obsolete business model to a whole new world– digital photography isn’t just a change in technology, it’s also a change in the way people think about pictures. Now, having thoroughly missed the boat, Polaroid will sink its life raft as well.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Thank you, Greg. I started using a Polaroid 600 as my exclusive camera over the summer and haven’t turned back. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do either, but I’m certainly not Chuck Close.
I agree, Polaroid really has a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem; that said, there’s also a tremendous burden to bear to transform their existing infrastructure and find a way to wholesale rethink their approach.
Off the top of my head and sans google search to see if these ideas already exist, I think the obstacles Polaroid has to overcome are (1) adapting polaroid images to a digital sharing environment and (2) getting consumers to adapt the cameras regardless of not having 100mpx and 500x zoom. I’m thinking an easy scanning aparatus with easy on-board, or even online, editing software to do magic to share photos.
Or maybe this is just the start of a conversation we’ll be having about 35mm film in an unknown number of years.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Did you see this?
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
it hurts my heart.