I recently saw the movie Memento, whose protagonist had his ability to form long term memory destroyed by a brain trauma. The guy remembers his early life but any new memory fades in minutes. Unfazed, since he is out on a mission of vengeance, he compensates by writing notes to his future self on scraps of paper and as tattoos on his body; and when he meets a person he takes out his Polaroid camera, produces a photo, and – before he forgets – writes on its back notes like “Don’t believe his lies” or “He’s the one. Kill him!”
It’s a fascinating movie, and makes you think a good deal about issues of memory, mind, and self; one other thought that came to me was that if he’d been doing it today, the hero would be at a loss – because Polaroid instant photography gear production died with a whimper last year, a victim to Digital Cameras.
Apart from amnesiac vigilantes, the demise of Polaroid cameras was a loss to us all. Sure, digital cameras are great, and have added many fascinating usage models to our life (think snapping a shot on a cellphone and sending it to a friend in a jiffy), but crowding with the friends you snapped around a tiny LCD screen is a far cry from the excitement of passing a high-resolution hardcopy photo around…
So I was delighted to see here the news of the Polaroid PoGo 5 Megapixel camera. Going with “if you can’t beat them, join them”, Polaroid is releasing this month a digital camera that produces instant color prints on its patented ZINK paper. I doubt that this will become widely used – for one thing, it’s bound to be rather expensive – but at least the instant usage model will be available to those who need it, or who just enjoy the fun. And there’s a kind of justice in it being Polaroid corporation that is making this heir to its past flagship product…
this camera was also used in the movie “yes man” with jim carey, just not to the extent that it was used in memento. i was taken aback because we had scoured all the stores a couple of years ago to purchase all the polaroid film in my local area. i hadn’t realized that there was another product that could do instant hardcopy pictures out now.
Polaroid has burned some bridges with consumers with the release and then retraction of instant film formats. I swore not to buy another Polaroid camera after the iZone or whatever it was called was starved for film. Yes it was a toy but a fun toy. Swearing off and all aside, there is a need for this here and there and I’d take a look.