Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid and the inventor of the world’s first instant camera and film, once said,

“Don’t undertake a project unless it’s manifestly important and nearly impossible.”

The Impossible Project is just that!

Photography teaches good philosophy if you are aware of what is happening in your life: try taking pictures with a 35 year old camera and use space age paper to make instant pictures. For me, in the beginning, it is indeed impossible.

I first heard about Polaroids still in use in Italy from Willem Oets, when he attended his first TPW (Tuscan Photographic Workshop) in 2011. I have played around with developing and printing black and white film in My Darkroom in Africa and love watching a picture come to life. After my tantalizing introduction to instant photography I knew it was a lifestyle I wanted to explore. In this age of instant gratification instant photography is actually not instant at all. Even the modern Fuji Instax film takes a minute to show a washed out image and ten minutes to mature. Furthermore, although a picture appears on paper, there is no instant digital sharing option, and the picture really is one of a kind.

In July this year at TPW I met the master of light and prints, Enrico Borgogni and have now embraced instant film cameras and love it. When we all presented our digital portfolios by way of introduction at TPW this year, Enrico passed around large prints of his masterpieces. Seeing and touching a masterpiece is far more sensual than looking at a good quality digital projection.

The new Polaroid film made by the Impossible Project needs to be kept dark for 4 minutes after exposure and then there are still chemical defects caused by the old rollers on the camera that set the chemical cascade in motion to reveal the picture. These add a timeless aura to the picture. Using the old Polaroid camera is not easy. There is no light meter, no histogram and no live preview. The exposure compensation ability is crude. Worse still my current camera (Polaroid CL600) seems to have a sticky shutter and the curtain is not moving out of the way fast enough. When I get my pictures right they will have a unique identifying shadow feature on each side.

In this day and age of instant mass production isn’t that what we strive for: to be unique.

The Impossible Project is teaching me patience; and allows me to be unique.