This, in itself, isn't so bad, but to make these delicious tiny machines that can capture a moment of time actually function, one piece is critical, and that is, to have film. Now, I've developed my own negatives, and rolled my own cartridges cut from a movie camera spool of raw 35mm, but to actually make the film itself, that is beyond the realm. Especially in the case of Polaroid. Impossible.
I loooove Polaroids. Goodness me.
Right now, (well, in 4 hours,) eight SX-70 cameras will go on sale. These will have been hiding in storage for over 30 years, and are brand new. Now, do I really need this camera? Absolutely not. Do I want it? Sure, but do I really want the camera or do I miss the process that I associated with it? What this is really about? I miss learning about how to use all of this terribly exotic equipment and I miss, wow, boy, where do I start?
As a teen, lots of kids learn how to do things that transition them to adulthood. Some kids learn the family gumbo recipe, others learn how to shoot a rifle. My Dad's gift to me was that he would take me aside and teach me how to shoot a vintage camera without a lightmeter. He taught me how to pose people and make it look like they were in complete repose. He taught me the hues of film, how Kodak is orange and Fuji is blue and if you want forever you buy Ektachrome - and this is BEFORE I attended one of the finest film schools in the world. Photography is the perfect icebreaker, because you're not supposed to be interacting with the scene, you're observing it. Looking back, my Dad was a complete introvert, he let my Mom take center stage, which she loved, and he got groovy with his Kodak, and he was off the hook having to talk to people. My secret weapon to adulthood was "You can see I have a camera in my hand, go away, I'm working, I don't have time for inane chitchat."
In school, when we would develop our photos, our entire floor was wired with speakers and we had the Grateful Dead piped into the darkrooms. The only clocks were the ones that measured how long the photopaper was in the bath. There was no color, because all of the light bulbs were photo-safe bordello red. Wearing black was not an affectation but a form of camouflage, because the more a human could blend in to the background, the less jarring it was when focusing on the white of the prints. You could spend six, eight, twelve hours in the darkrooms, not knowing what time it was, or if the sun set, or not saying anything to anyone even though the rooms would be hustling. Everyone was in a monastical zone, a level of self evaluation and critique that is not possible when speaking, because the side of the brain that governs visual and abstract decisions completely overrides the side of the brain that governs speech, and makes it its bitch.
Native cultures aren't too far off when they say "The photo catches the soul" because it does. My Dad had served in a horrible war overseas, and brought back photos that were witness to things that were unspeakable. Photos are powerful mojo. It just takes one shot, just one fleeting second in time captured -blam- where the true nature is revealed. Long after the photographer is dead and turned to dust, the photo remains as testament, transcending language and culture. Photos are critical to our evolution on a sociological level, truly.
So, to wrap this all up in some sort of cohesive thought, what I miss is not yet another piece of techie goodness, but the hours and hours of process that used to be spent on making a print. I get all morose around this time because my Dad isn't here anymore to teach me, in that wonderful non-verbal "look at the sky, watch my hands on the f-stop" way. (Laurie Anderson once said "When my father died, it was like a whole library had burned down" and she was right.) I get morose because right about now I would be in full swing of the Fall Semester, and making Art just to do it. Just fucking around, just seeing where it would go, (just blowing peoples' minds that I didn't need the crutch of a goddamn lightmeter. Hah!) I was dead broke then, as I am now, but back then, I was making something just for me. What an invaluable time that was.
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