ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the consumer phenomenon of the Polaroid instant camera. While other Polaroid technologies were used extensively in art photography, the company’s instant camera was a hit with consumers. The history of Polaroid devices grounds this contemplation of the temporality and physicality of the Polaroid. The Polaroid camera—so successful that it became synonymous with “instant pictures”—has an industrial history marked by rapid growth and equally rapid decline. While Polaroid introduced its patented polarizing film process and several related products, including the line of Polaroid consumer cameras and instant film, the company had its shares of struggles and declared bankruptcy in 2001. Today, Polaroid is more memory than it is material, but its material effects on popular culture remain and even seem to grow. With Polaroid, we see the media archaeological roots of visual, social media like Instagram in a technology that was simultaneously analog, “instantaneous”, everyday, and visual.
