In photography class on Monday we all got to take self-portraits with the 4x5 View Camera and a batch of Polaroid film. The last Polaroid film at Lawrence. It was donated by an old photo prof. back in 1995, the year of its expiration date. Polaroid film greatly declines after its expiration date--because the fluid chemicals in its developing pouch start to solidify, thereby becoming unusable. The top right corner shows an undeveloped patch, even, where the chemicals didn't flow over the image. J&J (my photo profs) speculated that they would have been able to sell it online for over a hundred bucks had they wanted to, but they decided it would be far neater to let us shoot with it. We each got to take one photo of ourselves, some got two, and then we did a group shot with the last Polaroid film. This is that photo, scanned so that we could all have a copy. (Click on it to see it larger.) Maybe some group somewhere will successfully make "Polaroid" film again...maybe not, in which case, I've got a stamp for history.
