Stuff I Love #1: The Polaroid Camera
As a kid, I always wanted a Polaroid camera for Christmas – along with a Mr Frosty.
My obsession started in the Eighties at a friend’s tenth birthday party. We watched a pirated video of ET, ate Viennetta ice-cream until we were sick, and were sent home in the evening with a memento of the day: an instant photo.
It was like holding magic in my hand. It took pride of place on the fridge, stuck up there with my favourite magnet.
The Polaroid camera was invented in 1943 by Edwin Land while on holiday with his family. His daughter had innocently asked him why she couldn’t see the picture he had just taken of her. Blimey, he thought, that’s a good idea, and the instant camera was born.
The Polaroid camera as we know it, the SX-70, was launched in 1972. It was fully automatic, with film that self-developed in daylight. No shaking required, no matter what that OutKast song tells you.
It was a revelation. No more waiting a week to get your crap photos back from the local processing shop. Here was something that was instant. Instant picture = instant happiness. Let the fun begin.
By the time the Nineties arrived, I’d outgrown Christmas. And Mr Frosty. But I finally got to buy my very own Polaroid camera. Brilliantly, I recently found the box of all my Polaroids. Some have faded to a weak grey. But some are just as I took them all those years ago; groups of smiling people, faces washed out by the enormous flash and eyes like aliens; messages scrawled across the bottom of the white frame, along with the year, as was the fashion.
In an age when everything is so digitised, there is now a fondness again for all things retro. Paperback books are jostling with Kindles, vinyl is stepping into the ring with iTunes, and Polaroid cameras are kicking digital butt.
Why? People want to see their pictures stuck on the fridge again, not on the hard drive of their computer. They want those pictures to remind them of the good times, to laugh at the drunken illegible writing on the white frame. They want that instant Polaroid happiness.
Long live the obsession.
Photo by Recito Prasida on Unsplash