But analog obsolescence has a way of making the postmillennial heart grow fonder, and with physical Polaroids bound for extinction, the Polaroid esthetic has in recent months become a rather ubiquitous signifier of cool. In February 2008, the Polaroid company, which had stopped selling instant cameras a year earlier, announced that it would cease producing its instant film as well, and by the beginning of 2009, all five of its remaining plants had been shuttered. Whatever film was left in stores was it. Polaroid enthusiasts flipped, scouring shops for leftover stock and propelling the price of a Polaroid packet into the high double digits. Some turned to activism (SavePolaroid.com); others began to archive prints online (Polanoid.net). A group called the Impossible Project even leased an abandoned Polaroid factory in the Netherlands and recruited a team of former Polaroid technicians to invent a new instant film. Soon the art world's longstanding passion for Polaroids began to trickle down to people who'd never shown a particular interest in the format—like, say, my Facebook friends, who can now consume their entire diet of hipster imagery in Polaroid form, from Porter Hovey's hazy blog to Matt Schwartz's sunburned prints; from the Polaroid-only photostream by indie rockers the Kills to 12 Instances, a recent show at New York's Heist Gallery. On a single afternoon in early June, I stumbled upon two more Polaroid tie-ins: an iPhone app called ShakeIt that "develops" its virtual Polaroids faster when the device is joggled, and the Polaroid Party, an N.Y.C. fete where guests pinned their own pics alongside prehung prints by local artistes. You'd almost think Polaroid is the new black.
Full article... What the fuck? Polaroid sucked. I'm glad it's dead. Fucking hipsters.
