It Grows Up with You and Becomes a Part of You That You

by Shelly

The very first picture of me was a Polaroid, shot with a SX-70 OneStep—the one with the rainbow stripe down the centre—when I was six hours old in my mum’s arms. That camera with its plastic body and fixed focus lens would, by the time I was well into my twenties, become the catalyst to get me into instant photography seriously. A fulfillment of prophecy, perhaps?

The first two to three years of my life were also captured with that same OneStep—sleeping, bathing, me with my mum or dad, summer pictures, winter pictures…all that loveliness.

The camera wouldn’t get use again for another quarter-century. In that interim, virtually any photo of me my parents took was taken with a 35mm SLR; and while I do have an affinity for 35mm, instant photography continues to fascinate me. Image transfers, emulsion lifts, SX-70 manipulations…all made possible by Polaroid film and, ultimately, Dr. Edwin Land.

For a while I’ve been fearing that I came into the world of instant photography too late. A year before I started getting into it seriously, SX-70 and Time Zero film, which my OneStep (and the other varieties of SX-70 cameras) took, went bye-bye. But then SX-70 “Blend” was commissioned by Polanoid and Unsaleable, not to mention 600 and 779 film were still around and were useable in those cameras, so there was a light at the end of the viewfinder. Then in February 2008 came the body blow: ALL Polaroid’s instant film was to say goodbye.

I’m a very stubborn woman sometimes. I don’t want to say goodbye to instant film forever. Did traditional painting die when photography or Photoshop and Painter were invented? Have 35mm, 120/220, and (to a point) 110 photography died thanks to digital? NO. So why should those of us who shoot instant film have to give that up? I don’t want my instant cameras to turn into nothing but collector’s items!

Before there was digital, there was Polaroid. Let’s keep instant film alive.