I recently bought a camera. A real tangible camera. Quite bulky as a matter of fact. Cheap-looking with its casing essentially made of plastic.
But it’s no standard camera. As a matter of fact, it’s an endangered species camera (Esc…). It’s a Polaroid. These cameras were the rage when I was 8 or so. It was the early nineties then and having an instant camera was a bit of a rarity. My dad tells me that 24-hour processing was quite a scary thought too – almost like witchcraft. Don’t even mention 1hr processing. Yep, old-timers took their time to live life.
It reminds me of Civil War soldiers and the brave few photographers who paced up and down the battered battlefields of Virginia, the Carolinas, and other torn states. The soldiers, not knowing what a camera was, often mistook it for yet another deadly contraption.
Having acquired the camera on a leading online auction website, I hunted for film. The camera itself was cheap – the film is not. The film is actually the endangered bit of the ’species’ as Polaroid, the soul (and not sole since Fujifilm and Kodak also dabbed in instant filmmaking) manufacturer, has decided to call off future productions. Bits and Bytes have had the upper hand on acid polymers and silver particles…
With film being a rarity, might I whisper luxury, I was hesitant as to what I could shoot. I had to juggle between my consumerist urge to snap, shoot, frame, and process all that I saw and my cautious awareness of the limited amount of available film.

My first two attempts are quite random so far. A self-portrait with my housemate – himself a keen photographer, though digital (who’s who?) and a dead bean that has been. I dubbed it the Been Bean & the Broken Circle. I will let you judge the results yourselves…