HARDWARE
Most reminiscent of tabloid, the word polaroid suggests blackmail photographs taken in roadside motels, the possibility of domestic pornography (before the advent of the video camera), and police evidence photos of some starkly displayed corpse - appropriate, given that most people caught in the spectral halo of an indoor Polaroid flash tend to look rather mortal themselves. While there is absolutely no technique to a Polaroid - no lens to twist, no light meter to calibrate - there is an art, and only true artists have the confidence to surrender their muse to the machine, which ejects the photograph with all the ceremony of a vending machine dispensing chocolate bars.
So I was especially excited by Polaroid's new line of affordable instant cameras, which provide a low-fi alternative to expensive and tactile-less digital photography. Without motors, they return photography to its most basic level: capturing a moment of light on a piece of film. I was most intrigued by the I-Zone Pocket Camera, a blue, biomorphic bit of plastic about the size of a desk stapler that produces photographs about 1 inch square - the size one imagines a Barbie photograph. The Pocket Camera also produces sticker versions of its photos, so the visual parameters of that genre will no longer be limited to contorted kids aping inside a photo booth at Urban Outfitters.
Two other offerings, the JoyCam and PopShots, are closer to traditional Polaroid cameras in shape, size, and photo quality, although they produce rectangular, rather than roughly square, images. The key difference - besides their being disposable - is that to release a photograph after it is taken, the user must yank on a grenade-like pin on the side of the camera, an admittedly pleasurable exercise.
These cameras have no focusing mechanism and a suggested range of only 3 feet, and I wasn't about to take them on a safari to Kenya. Instead, I stuck to the subject matter most appropriate for Polaroid: people. (I did, however, subject my pug to several indoor flash shots; my girlfriend was compelled to color his eyes black to rid him of that Satan's-minion look.) There is a residual bit of wonder in taking a photograph and instantly showing it to someone, suggestive of the putative belief among primitive peoples that cameras capture the soul. The photos become a kind of social currency, traded for laughs and instant remembrance.
I-Zone Pocket Camera, JoyCam, and PopShots: $24.99, $24.99, and $19.99. Polaroid: (800) 343 5000, www.polaroid.com/products.
STREET CRED
Basement Area Network
Hacking the Vacuum Tube
Free of Attachments
Polaroid's Sticky Portal
Burnt Rubber, Chicago Style
Booting Up Beelzebub
Out of the Celluloid Closet
ReadMe
Music
Saar-Sighted
The Transreal Thing
I, Nicklaus
American History f/x
Just Outta Beta
Little Big Screen
"It Was Just the Law of Large Numbers at Work"
Contributors
