Polaroid film is such an elegant solution to what was once a complex problem—how to shake an image loose from the moment it was made. There’s been such a stunning leap to digital imaging that it’s easy to forget, to lose the actual feel of it, but it once took days or weeks to see what you made with a camera. Unless you used a Polaroid.
Jackson, Mississippi, Polaroid 600 with expired film (2015)
The integral film which debuted in the 1970s was a full film lab in a rectangle that could slide into your pocket. The base of the rectangle is the developer pod, the visible square the photosensitive paper. When you mash the button the shutter opens, banging light onto the paper, and the camera’s motor begins the ejection of the frame through the rollers at the bottom. This pop the pod and spreads developer fluid over the paper, et voila, your image begins to rise from the void.
Memphis, Polaroid 600 with expired film (2013)
This self-processing worked astonishingly well by the time I started regularly using Polaroid to make art around the turn of the century. It wasn’t cheap, and there were plenty of times splurging on a pack of film was out of reach—it was, after all, ten dollars for ten shots. Yet the color and detail you could sometimes achieve were so beautiful.
Then, in 2008, it all went away.
Venice, Los Angeles, California, Polaroid 600 with expired film (2016)
Okay, I’m being dramatic, but at the time it seemed like it was all ending for good. Polaroid as a company essentially ceased to exist, and stopped making film entirely. All the rich color and detail of decades of innovation was locked into those remaining miniature photo labs—and they had an expiration date. The further you got from that last graduating class of 2008, the less a chance the film would turn out.
In the three photos above, you can see a really typical way expired Polaroid would react. Remember the chemicals are in the pod at the bottom, and they harden and shift after expiring. So when the film is ejected, it doesn’t spread as far, doesn’t have the same color reactions. You typically have a stripe of better (although still faint) color in the middle, with less of the chemicals spreading towards the top of the frame—leading to this beautiful negative mountain range effect. The contrast is nearly gone, leading to the faded look, and there’s a pinkish cast, sometimes tangerine.
Orange, Texas, Polaroid 600 with expired film (2016)
Frankly though these images were rare; more commonly there was no image, or just the ghost mountains. In the worst case the film would jam because it couldn’t roll out the hardened developer. For a while I kept a pair of pliers just to manually pull out jammed Polaroids, like this one of the Delta Mart.
Medger Evers Boulevard, Jackson, Miss., Polaroid 600 with expired film (2014)
Edwin Land strove for decades to find how to develop film instantly. In the 21st century, this problem no longer exists. Once instant, Polaroid is now deliberate, the slower physical physical cousin to the automatic magic of our phones and megasensors.
Graceland, Memphis, Polaroid 600 with expired film (2013)
I haven’t shot any expired Polaroid in years—the last of it is long gone. It was magic until the end.
Cabazon, California, Polaroid 600 with expired film (2016) (screaming “when you wake up I’ll be gone”)
AS ALWAYS I am gorjusjxn on Instagram (still on a break but lots of Polaroids there) and you can see more of my photography at McCartyPolaroids.
I’ll leave you with an expired shot taken of me by the artist and curator Richard McCabe. Richard is tremendously kind and thoughtful person, as well as a large influence on my art. His Land Star collection is a significant and beautiful archive of Polaroid art. This 2014 portrait was done the same day I took the Delta Mart above, made in the studio of Roy Adkins.