![]() ![]() of Boston to buy Polaroid for US$67 million last year, the plan was to sell a whole slate of new products, including digital and video cameras, home entertainment systems and even glasses and goggles under thePolaroid name. “It’s not every day you have the opportunity to buy a brand with such strong acceptance around the world.”Īfter Hilco teamed up with Gordon Bros. “It’s such an iconic brand worldwide,” says Salter. That was part of what drew Hilco to Polaroid, says the firm’s CEO James Salter. These tangible things have gained in value.” Good or bad, right or wrong, it’s what you created. “The thing on the paper is a tangible artifact of that moment in time. “There’s something to be said for not being able to instantly take more digital photos or change things in Photoshop,” says Bias. Just as there’s been a resurgence of interest among young people for vinyl records and even typewriters – things you can hold and touch – instant film cameras are becoming hot commodities again. The company estimates there are nearly one billion functioning Polaroid cameras out there.īut Bias believes there’s more to it than that. Many people who grew up snapping photos of friends and family, then shaking the print to help it dry, still have their cameras. One reason for the intensity of the movement is nostalgia. Under the name the Impossible Project, the group restarted the plant with the goal of making and selling new film for Polaroid cameras. He also teamed up with Florian Kaps, an Austrian artist and photographer who’d been in talks with Polaroid to take over the company’s shuttered film factory in the Dutch town of Enschede. Dave Bias, a New York graphic designer, and other volunteers set up a Save Polaroid website. Polaroid’s decision in 2008 to pull the plug on instant film sentshock waves through the small but thriving community of instant-film diehards. This remarkable revival is all thanks to a unique combination of grassroots enthusiasm and the marketing savvy of private equity investors, including Toronto-based Hilco Consumer Capital, which bought the company last year. “People were paying their respects to a wonderful medium,” says organizer Kevin Staniec. Just this past weekend, thousands turned out for a gallery exhibit in Santa Monica featuring more than 1,850 Polaroid images by professional and amateur artists from around the world. Most important of all, Polaroid is enjoying immense buzz among artists in ways it never has before. ![]() Polaroid is even getting back into the field of analog photography by re-releasing some of its classic instant cameras. The company is churning out new digital products at a feverish pace. Then, with the phenomenal popularity of digital cameras obliterating demand for traditional film, the company stopped manufacturing instant cameras and film altogether.īut now Polaroid is back. Polaroid’s former owner turned out to be a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi fraudster. The company that invented and popularized instant photography has gone bankrupt twice since 2001. The past decade was a hellish one for Polaroid. Lady Gaga has signed on to be the creative director at Polaroid, a company that not too long ago had been relegated to the dead brand scrap heap. But behind the glitz was perhaps an even more astonishing revelation. When she stepped onto a stage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, the reigning queen of pop and preposterous fashion didn’t disappoint – the sprawling sun hat the diva wore turned out to be made entirely of her own hair. It was a bummer to get all excited about it only to hear it was already spoken for but it really did seem like too good of a deal to be true.Anytime Lady Gaga is in the house, you can be sure of a spectacle. I emailed back, thanked them, and let them know if there was any more film I was definitely interested. I got an email back almost immediately stating that someone else has already emailed and would be coming to get the film and cameras the next day. I immediately emailed, not expecting too much since it had been listed for nearly two weeks already. The price for all those things was around the same price I’d expect to pay for one of those packs of film. There was a post from eleven days previous for four packs of original Polaroid film, as well as two Polaroid cameras. I was checking out apartments in Phoenix (not that I’m actually considering moving but it’s fun to day dream, aye?), looking at free stuff in Cleveland, and going down the list of things I search for in the for sale section when I remember that craigslist exists. ![]() Two days before leaving on my big road trip I was aimlessly browsing craigslist.
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