“Aus der Nacht tiefdunklem Schatten“ - “Out of the Deep and Dark Shadows of the Night” is a work about sequences of dreams, distant realities, and memories of them. With the visualization of these thoughts, I immerse into a world that seems to be far away from our reality. Each of the original Polaroid prints is only visible for a very short moment before they slowly disappear more and more—similar to our dreams and thoughts. I tried to fix this short moment with all its irregularities, to create a space for my imaginations."

“A final chapter is her Pola-Vision Series, Weitz has been working with the last of her expired Polaroid Time-Zero film, nearly a decade old, to capture images of today that conjure her vanishing past. The film on hand ceased manufacture and expired in 2006. She shoots the Time-Zero with vintage SX-70 cameras—the resulting images often fighting to the surface with failing chemistry, reminding us our present becomes past in the time it takes to press a shutter.”

“La Montagne Noire” is a series of landscape photographs made with instant black and white film. Dark environments and bold frames tend to evoke the surreal world of film; however, the subjects are familiar places next to where we sometimes go in a distracted way, without suspecting what they may conceal."

“The death of Polaroid as a format has been foretold often. But it persists. Boris makes nearly all of his personal photography with any Polaroid film he can obtain. For this series he made light paintings using outdated Polaroid film. ”

“Over the course of two weeks in 2014, I explored Iceland through the Ring Road, which connects, from one settlement the next, the entirety of the Nordic country. I traveled alone with a 4x4, and would often wake up in the morning to surroundings that, due to the immensely diverse microclimates, looked and felt unrecognizable from the day before. ”

“Safe Distance explores the intimate relationship between photographer and sitter. This relationship is as much about the process of making the images as the final photograph. The slow, tenuous practice of creating large format photographs invites the sitter to orchestrate his or her own composition.”

“Facing Destiny is an opening of temporal spaces, material and imagined. There is the material present: the space of the image and the figures represented. And the imagined future: a space not-yet-here that exists somewhere between the gaze of the individuals depicted, the lens, and the viewer. Predictions are produced by the subjects, which in their bodily presentness, are always unfolding and projecting towards a time in the horizon. In this series the figure is not represented as situated in the flow of time, but is the flow of time itself.”

“I began shooting large format in 2002, and this is when I first began to use Polaroid Type-55 film. This film has characteristics that are interesting to me. One of these characteristics being the positive’s delicate and transient nature. I found that if I did not coat the resulting positive with hardening fixer, it would decompose in completely unpredictable ways."

“It was difficult to understand the contradiction between the harsh ideas Americans had of Russia and the whimsical nature of what I was seeing on television. I now satisfy my curiosity by traveling there, and capture these dramatic scenes with the same feeling of wide-eyed wonderment I had felt as a youth, mimicking the visions of my earliest ideas of Russia.”

Instant power landscapes. Images from an ongoing project about various forms of power transmission installations and roadside construction in the landscape

I have been shooting with Polaroid for 10 years now. When I discovered it, I was instantly addicted. What fascinates me is the results these chemicals can create—unpredictable and surprising at times.

"Today the action of man is felt everywhere. I choose to take a different look at my surroundings daily. By taking pictures of the trivial, I wish to show that our impact on what’s around us has become commonplace. We no longer pay attention to it. Through construction or destruction, calculated actions or unwitting influences, these pictures are the results of this acknowledgment. The use of a Polaroid camera adds a dimension of instantaneity and proof to the pictures."

"...a former psychology student and graphic designer, now I'm a freelance photographer, mainly interested in portraiture and photojournalism"

This editorial was produced for Swiss KINKI magazine in collaboration with New York-based stylist Travis Steele Sisk. We worked in a hotel room on the Lower East Side Manhattan. My work is always inspired by the absurdity of beauty and the fantastic magic of the human body. I love to create new unsettled but aesthetic creatures acting in the farcical situations of daily life.

“Shooting instant film is a practice in slowing down. Each frame offers an instance to mute my surroundings and focus my attention before me. Polaroid film is the instant motion of capturing a moment in time even as the moment carries on.”

“My models, women most of the time, are my loved ones, my mom and friends. I like inventing stories, universes, and characters that inspire me. When the Polaroid is finished, I like stressing its surrealist dimension by working again it with a double-exposure manipulation or by adding some nail polish on top, which gives it a plastic art effect."

“I have always found instant film fascinating, and when Polaroid stopped production of all instant films, I genuinely felt a little scared, thinking that I may never be able to shoot it again! Luckily, there is still the odd pack of Polaroid film floating around out there, and with the new film being produced by the Impossible Project, I can carry on my experimentation with this amazing medium."

“My love lies in the world of film. I began experimenting with an old family SLR from the 70s, and I cherished every bit of it. The fact that the photos would exist in a physical form after development was enthralling to me. With each new roll of film being shot, my curiosity grew larger."

"Surely it’s the fact that you have pastel colors, a bit in contrast with the sharpness of the digital photography so fashionable now. This gives instant photos a retro, dreamy look that fascinates me so much. It also helps to create the atmosphere I’m after in my pictures. Magic! Even now, it still amazes me when the picture develops in my hand—simply magic!"

“The most artistic aspect is that Polaroids develop on their own, and I immediately can see the results and how the material surprises me again and again. Especially when I take a few hours’ trip, it would be really unpleasant without this kind of photography. I try to capture the beauty on this special material, and this connection is art. It seems like the expired films take you and your photos to another world. Take a Polaroid picture and you will know what I mean!"

“I shoot exclusively women, first of all, because I think they are more photogenic, they have a better aesthetic knowledge of their body, and also because I like to work with women more because they bring a different vision to the photographic project than my masculine one. I’m not very directorial to my models, so I need to get them to understand the idea of the shoot and to bring their own brick to the wall."

“I love shooting people because you never know who you’re going to work with and what kind of mood s/he will be in. I love any subject matter I haven’t shot before; a challenging set-up is ideal, like 30 minutes in a cramped ugly hotel room, where I have to figure out how to make that work."

“Lately, I’ve been in this sort of instant film microcosm, where from the inside it feels as though there is this great momentum welling, and that we and it will have this triumphant renaissance. Adam Goldberg”

"As he describes himself on his official website, Adam Goldberg is an American ‘actor, filmmaker, photographer, musician, Lamaze coach, and purveyor of fine meats.’ Few people could hold true to mastering every single item on that list and earn the right to be described as a modern renaissance man, but Adam is certainly one of them. There's not a single thing on his personal skill list one could not admire, but here we take a closer look at his relationship to instant photography, as well as his recent involvement in the Polaroid renaissance. Jennifer Rumbach"

„Basically, I think anything can become fascinating when captured on Polaroid film because Polaroid film takes every subject into another dimension: that of nostalgia, of dreams, of memory – maybe of the unconscious. What you shoot on Polaroid film just doesn’t look ordinary or “real” anymore, and that’s what fascinates me.“

„I’m trying to freeze a world that I feel I belong in myself, a dreamy melancholic feeling, where my mind often ends up. I return a lot to my roots, and many of my pictures are from journeys I took as a child; from the blue of Sweden, to the black and white desert landscapes of Israel. My pictures are, for me, a reflection on the human need for silence and reflection. Far away are the quick impressions and the daily stress of everyday life, leaving only our original values, roots, and tranquility. What is more elementary then the sea, the mountains, and the earth?“

"I’m fascinated with instant films because I believe they are closest to paint in many ways. They are more than a traditional film because they are unique. They also have a “soul,” delivering immediate emotion. It’s also a physical thing—you can smell and touch them. It’s really quite different."

"To my mind one of the greatest advantages of Polaroid photography is the fact that the technique is reduced to the absolute minimum which brings the motive and the topic right in the centre of attention." Jennifer Rumbac
"I also am attracted to the small, “human” size of the images, a stubborn product in today’s world, where everyone wants it bigger and louder. With these Polaroids, I feel like I create a world of intimacy, imploring one to step closer and contemplate the delicate details often missed when viewing from afar." Ildiko Voros

"Alexey Kurbatov is a 24 years old self-taught photographer from Russia. Although a graduate from Technical University, Alexey dedicated himself completely to photography. His first works were for local magazines and sites, events, concerts. At one point he fell in love with analog photography and after an experimenting period and a long search for ‘his’ camera, he sta¬rted using Polaroid, Holga, Leica M6 and Pinhole camera. Alexey is not focused on creating photo series or projects; he perceives each of his photographs as a project on its own which makes it cha¬llenging for him to set up a thematic exhibition."

"The vagiaries of polaroid are never more apparant than images created through the SX-70. When I shot my first SX-70 films in Florence I knew ‘instantly’ that this was the future of my photography, even though the camera failed after only 4 sheets. Shooting Polaroid requires me to think about planning and achieving, but without the assurance that it will actutally happen and that is very exci­ting. Having taken the shot, I am forced to rely on the ecentric mechanics of a 40-year old camera spitting out an equally ecentric cocktail of paper and chemicals .… it’s a total lottery, and I love it. More and more I find myself shooting the Pola, putting it away immediately, before it has even processed, and not looking at it many hours later, by which time it is far too late to re-shoot. It is all part of placing your trust in something that is totally out of your control, and adds the the sense of anticipation that cannot be replicated in any other form of photography."

I’m a person that like to see fast results, sometimes I even don’t have patie­nce. I prefer to make food, that doesn’t take too much time, but good quality.

The instant photography meets the needs of me. I love the quality of the print, the colors and the nostalgic look. But my favorite part in instant photography is the 3 minutes it takes to develop, I love the waiting, the changes it goes trough, this is the peak moment for me. Off course I can’t ignore the fact that it is sweet and sexy.

Polaroid takes me back to the classic painting, because of the colors but also because it is one of a kind, not like a film that you can make copies, Polaroid naturally is a one limited edition.

Paul Giambarba is a famous and indeed a very interesting name in the world of design and product branding. When I started exploring his work, I contacted him via e-mail and, by coincidence, on his 81st birthday. Moreover, he revealed some more interesting things. His daughter-in-law, and therefore his grandchildren, have Croatian origins, while the Giambarbas come from a small town near Termoli in Italy. Our correspondence turned out to be very interesting and inspirational, which made me suggest that we show overview of his Polaroid related work that he explained in details on his blog. He even let me use photographs of his design work.

Polaroid in Female Hands |Isidora Vujosevic
Polaroids provoke special feelings in people while looking at them. And what are women without emotions? They are fish without water. So we asked Fernanda what kind of emotions she tries to provoke.

- I am interested in telling stories and expressing myself through visuals. Polaroid and its dreamy, blurred quality is the perfect means for me to do that. Intense and intimate, I cannot think of a better way to communicate my feelings than to let these precious little squares do the talking... –this Uruguay-British artist says.

It is time for a new beginning | Damir Sirola
Why do we love children’s drawings? I would compare most Polaroids exactly with children’s drawings, containing a component of fantasy that kids ‘squeeze’ into reality and consider this to be normal, the same fantasy that usually limits photographic media. Each photographer that is fond of Polaroid should be asked how he or she felt at the fist moment of using this instant technique? Why exactly this imperfect Polaroid, among millions of pixels or perfectly corrected lenses? Is there any more space in our brains for functioning as children’s, on a level that does not separate fantasy from reality? Is there better media to transfer these waves than Polaroid? Probably not.

Who is we?

That’s me, my partner André Bosman, former production manager of Polaroid and now executive director for development and production, Marwan Saba, non-executive director of finance & legal - and most important our team of the most experienced Integral Film experts worldwide. 9 former workers of Polaroid in Enschede (NL) are developing the new film with us.

For further information related to the ‘Impossible Project,’ please visit the official web page:
http://www.the-impossible-project.com

Polaroids | Mare Milin
When I think about it, I know that is one of the best photo things that ever happened to me. From the moment when, with a specific buzz, it finds its way through the tiny passage in the camera, which kind of spits it on my palm, and I watch it as some kind of miracle, fading in gently. And I admire it for being so beautiful at all stages of the development, changing its density, colors and contrasts and then becomes something else. So human-like. Polaroid is being born, it comes to be, it fades, it dies.

History of the Polaroid | Ivan Zidar
His three year old daughter Jennifer asked why she could not see the photograph just after being taken. Land decided to please children’s curiosity and started considering many options while walking for an hour in Santa Fe.

Memory keepers | Isidora Vujošević
Hazy veil spread over Polaroid images captures the moment. It seems that memories are stronger with Polaroids.

POLAROID PORTOFOLIO |Ivan Zidar
Ivan Zidar was born in Pula, Croatia, in 1978. During high school he volunteered in production of Radio Pula programme. Between 1996 and 1998, he worked for Croatian TV studio in Pula and, since 2001, he has been in new media production. He is the owner of an agency for video production, graphic design and event management. During the last couple of years he produced numerous documentaries, promotional or experimental movies out of which the most recent one was shown in 18th Croatian Film Days. He mostly explores photography using Polaroid lenses.