The Impossible Project May Be Just That

The Impossible Project had 31.536.000 seconds to re-invent Instant Photography. Big countdown. Big announcement imminent. Then, nothing. Reports are  in that the new instant film may never see the light of day. What’s the holdup? Nobody knows, but the news doesn’t sound good. The project “encountered an unexpected problem with one of the components vital for production,” says a spokeswoman. “This undesirable fact is now engaging all of the Impossible team’s attention and is forcing a rescheduling of the project’s timetable. As such, the NYC press event on 22nd February has to be postponed.” That would make the timing of Polaroid’s announcement of a new line of instant cameras rather unfortunate.^*

^*: It’s worth noting that Polaroid isn’t really Polaroid any more. Polaroid went bankrupt in 2001 and its assets were liquidated. A bank bought them and created a new corporation to exploit the name and technology. This group licensed its name to everything it could extract a dime for, stopped making film and cameras and went bankrupt in 2008 after its parent company turned out to be a four billion dollar ponzi scheme. The Polaroid assets, including its fine art photography collection, were auctioned off to some company nobody’s ever heard of for two pittances and a goat. This company, PLR IP Holdings, intends to recoup its investments by auctioning off the right to use the name Polaroid to different companies for different applications, including gaming peripherals and USB speakers. The right to slap a Polaroid logo on instant cameras went to the Summit Global Group, and they’re the people who thought it would be a good idea to create a new instant Polaroid camera that would use the Impossible Project’s possibly impossible instant film.