12 years of memories the rebirth of the Polaroid

First, there is a ‘magical’ transformation, the first few seconds when the photo gradually unfolds before your eyes. There it is, lying in your palm, a little shiny, with an unmistakable tint... It’s the classic Polaroid photo, and one that has certainly been enjoying a new lease of life over the last few years. While millions of images are published every second on the internet, the desire for ‘slow’ images is a very real one. Polaroid is one of its symbols and owes its rebirth to a few enthusiasts who decided to relaunch a technology that had almost disappeared.

Its history begins in the middle of the last century. The American physicist Edwin Herbert Land, a specialist in polarisation and head of the Polaroid Corporation, launched the Polaroid 95 in sepia tones in 1948, followed soon after by a ‘black and white’ version. The three-colour film first saw the light of day in 1962. The Polaroid Land camera was a roaring success on both the American and international markets with its ability to capture and magically display snapshots from life only a few seconds after being taken.

However, in the 1980s, the company was unable to compete against the arrival of the likes of Fuji’s Instax and digital competitors... The last Polaroid film production plant closed its doors in 2008 in Enschede, the Netherlands.

Florian Caps, an Austrian entrepreneur, refused to accept this state of affairs and took over the factory with two partners. The project was considered somewhat crazy, so they baptised it The Impossible Project. The first black and white films were released in March 2010 under the Impossible brand. But Florian Caps and his associates were not content to simply reproduce the original technique. They innovated by offering films that were more resistant to light, with a slightly faster development time. In 2017, the brand was bought by one of its shareholders to become Polaroid Originals.

More than ten years after, The Impossible Project, has turned out to be a successful bet. And the instant retro-magic continues to this day.