IN AN INSTANT

I've fallen in love with the Instant Film format, something about the tactile image, you can hold this original, and in the moment picture. It started with buying a Polaroid Land Camera 220, I bought that as it was announced that the Fuji Pack Film was being discontinued. I then got hold of a Polaroid 600 camera, and now a Polaroid SX-70, which has been my go to instant camera. The love I have comes from the fact we see almost all of our media digitally now, but with a Polaroid, the image is in your hand; you're able to bend, rip, tear and destroy the image as you wish, or keep a collection of physical visual memories. This will be an ongoing project that I will keep adding to as my passion for it grows. "What a unique thing Polaroids were! Once almost science fiction, now definitely from the past, they occupy a very special place in our relationship to imagery and to photography, certainly in mine. Taking Polaroids always felt like a very different act to me than 'photographing' as such. The camera itself was almost considered a toy, not a 'serious' instrument, and taking pictures with it was simply fun. There was something casual and playful about it, carefree, almost reckless. It was a little magic act each time - nothing more, nothing less. I don't think I'm romanticising when I allege that Polaroids were the last outburst of a time when we had certainty, not only in images. We had nothing but confidence in things, period." - Wim Wenders from the 'Instant Stories: Wim Wenders' Polaroids' exhibition at The Photographer's Gallery