Polaroid Snap-shots: Pre-Instagram Selfie Tech

 The above photos were manipulated with a pen or wooden stylus
against the inside emulsion over the plastic cover.

 

Early 1980s Polaroid "selfie" photos taken with the 660 Sun Camera

Before Social Media, before Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, the funnest way to share an event, take selfie photos and get instant gratification with making a handy visual record of your friends (and, yes, even food) was with a Polaroid camera. By the time I was 19 or so, I had been using the Polaroid 600-film camera to record all my fun events with friends and family in a neat little square that popped out from the front of the camera with a motorized grind and snap. A grayish blank chemical goo, at first, that was smeared behind a transparent plastic window and activated the light sensitive image field, it would, in moments become a photo of smiling faces or scenic beauty. Some people would hold the photo by the edge and fan it back and forth but that didn't help. No air could get inside the sealed plastic of the photo to make a difference.

I even got artsy with my polaroid prints and would smoosh around the chemicals near the image frame before it it fully developed to make distortions and weird effects. It wasn't cheap. Each print cost almost a dollar so it was important to think carefully as I set up and planned each shot.

When Polaroid rolled out their new 660 Camera, I was obsessed with getting one. I was living at home and commuting to college to be a graphic artist and worked part time at a little newspaper in more of an intern capacity. So I couldn't afford to buy it. I pined away thinking of all then features. The autofocus, the self-timer. The different filters and the built-in flash. It was like a dream. But my parents were always willing to help me out with my art supplies for school and were sick of me going on an on about this camera. So my mom decided to go with me to the K-mart near the college and buy the camera for me. I invited a friend from school, Mitch, to go with us.

Such was my excitement that I was almost numb. We found the Polaroid 660 Sun camera box in the photo department. I waited briefly in line as I gazed at the idealized image of the camera on the box and read about all the features. Oddly enough, however, when we walked out of the store into the early afternoon sunshine, I said, stupidly, if candidly, "Wow. I was waiting all this time to get this camera and I don't even care now." Glancing at my mom, Mitch gave a nervous laugh.

"What do you mean, you don't care?", my mom said, brows furrowed with indignation. "I just spent $130.00 on that for you!"
"It's just that…." I began, not knowing how to back pedal very well, "I'm just not as excited about it now."
"Well, we can take it back…!", Mom offered in a semi-threatening tone.
"Oh, no…! I still want it. It's just…"
Mitch was looking at me like, "Shut up, you idiot!"
So I said, "Really, Mom, Thanks though. I do want it."

Looking back on the occasion now, I realize I was experiencing that contrasting sequence of emotions in which the anticipation of acquiring something is much more of a rush of feeling than after that thing has been acquired. It's like the excitement leading up to and just before the opening of presents on Christmas morning.

At any rate, I got a lot of use out of that camera and still have tons of photos I took with it before it got superseded by the Polaroid Spectra camera which I also bought (with my own money that time). But looking back on that day, I think it tells me of how I was in touch with my emotions enough to notice a flatness of feeling that I had once my long held expectations were met. I still feel that way now sometimes. I'll get very obsessed with a project or goal and then after I fulfill it or even sometimes before that, I lose interest.

I've seen vintage Polaroid 660 Sun Cameras online now for $30 bucks. I think I'll pass for now.

More Polaroid Photos