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The little instant camera is not new, but the neat packaging that Fujifilm do of the idea and the ubiquitous nature of their film distribution mean that nearly everyone can do these nearly anytime, nearly anywhere.
You get a choice of sizes, shapes, sophistication ( Aww, don’t tell me you don’t want an orange, green or purple one….) and you can even get one that combines digital capture with the Instax film.
The film is a small miracle. The photographer shoots the shot, the camera buzzes the result out the bottom, and it sits there in your hand as a white piece of paper and plastic. All the while there is a chemical tornado occurring in a number of layers inside - reactions are transferring back and forth and gradually a positive image in vague colours starts to form.
It strengthens minute by minute and you can see the result - in this case a bald old coot looking at a secondhand camera - but you really only see the entire contrast and saturation develop over an hour or so. And it really is very accurate - that head of no-hair really does look like that, dang it…
Well, what you see is what you get and what you do with it is also up to you. The Fujifilm man was showing of, but the result will stay with me for a long time - indeed I have a similar item from ten years ago that exhibits the same clarity and colour saturation as this fresh example - an that’s ten years pinned to a display board. There is more sophistication there than you would think.
I have no idea whether people use these cameras and the results for professional purposes - I can see them featuring in promotional and hospitality venues. Of course they can be the stars of the show at parties and family affairs.
The fact that they are literally a one-off also suggests, like a daguerreotype, that they can be a historical artefact that defines a moment and cannot be repeated. Art your way around that as best you can…
All images and text by Richard Stein
