Polaroid cameras find new popularity among teens

Zoe Kanan, 18, takes Polaroids of her family's chickens, Edith Piaf and Betty Ford. Zoe Kanan, 18, takes Polaroids of her family's chickens, Edith Piaf and Betty Ford. Photo: Bill Olive, For The Chronicle Photo: Bill Olive, For The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Polaroid cameras find new popularity among teens 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Today's hip teens are rarely seen untethered from their iPhone or Blackberry. But many are just as loath to part with their Polaroid.

For retro hipsters-in-training, the '70s throwback is one of the hottest hand-me-downs around.

"When I know something exciting is gonna happen, I'll take the Spectra," Rachel Vogel said, holding up the boxy instant camera she inherited from her father.

"This is my baby," she said, gazing at it lovingly.



Polaroid's teenage acolytes so love the clunky cameras, which went out of production a few years ago, that they scour junk shops and Web sites to snag one. And since the Concord, Mass.-based company announced in February that it would stop manufacturing instant film, fans are hoarding cartridges in refrigerators and closets or stacking it atop already cluttered bureaus.

Vogel, a petite and bespectacled 18-year-old, insists she has no plans to spend hundreds of dollars she doesn't have to amass the film. That's hard to believe, judging from the Polaroid snapshots she's plastered like wallpaper next to her bed. They offer a visual narrative of the past two years of Vogel's life: the messy green pancakes she made with her friend Jessica; another friend, Will, plucking the banjo at Menil Park; the afternoon she and her buddies played connect the dots with their freckles.

"It's nice to have a chronicle of all the people and stuff I've done," Vogel said.

Vogel's digital camera just isn't the same.

For the younger generations, Polaroids add old-school charm to a PhotoShopped, digitally mastered age. The cameras' vintage look and slightly off-kilter color reels them in, but the near-instant gratification — point, click, wait two minutes — and the hold-in-your-hand payoff is what compels their hobby.

"It's so much better to hold a picture in your hand than to see it on a computer screen," Polaroid enthusiast Zoe Kanan said.

"I like the instantaneous thing you get from Polaroids," added Gabriella Flournoy, who says at least 90 percent of her friends are addicted to their Polaroid cameras.

For these teens, the uncertainty of how the photo will turn out only adds to the Polaroid experience.

"When you take a Polaroid, you totally go on impulse," Kanan said.

In March, Kanan and Flournoy, both 18, were part of a teen group that contributed snapshots to "Polarize," an exhibition that payed homage to the Polaroid at the Contemporary Arts Museum.

The Internet is flush with Polaroid diehards young and old who have come together to commiserate — posting Polaroid snapshots on photo-sharing Web sites, blogging in protest of the coming end of the Polaroid era.

On the social-networking site Facebook, more than 31,000 people belong to the group "Save the Polaroids." One of them is Kanan.

When designer and photographer Dave Bias learned of the film's impending demise, he decided he wasn't letting go without a fight. Shortly after the company's February announcement, he co-founded SavePolaroid.com.

"We thought we needed to take a stand on this if nothing else," Bias, based in New York City, said of the effort.

"That way, the world would see that not only is Polaroid film viable, but there's a market for it."

The Web site lets grieving fans download "action packets" that include ready-to-mail letters imploring Polaroid to reconsider its decision and do-it-yourself stencils to help spread the word. Bias said the campaign has attracted a couple of thousand responses.

With tens of thousands of fans rallying in Europe and Asia, Bias hopes that the enthusiasm and outrage lead to a revival of Polaroid film.

"It's the film everyone knows," he said emphatically. "The Polaroid print has value. It has worth. It is real."

As with many once-hot but now-extinct products, technology led to Polaroid's downfall.

Instant photos may have been all the rage for consumers, but it was the commercial uses of instant film, such as the photos on driver's licenses, that paid for the factories, according to Anne Wilkes Tucker, curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Much of that work is now done with digital cameras.

Wilkes sounded resigned as she dismissed rumors that Polaroid's announcement was a publicity stunt to boost sales.

"It's for real," she said.

Wilkes said she worries about the cultural history illuminated by photographs that could vanish when instant film does.

"Most people never print the digital photograph," she said. "They just send them to friends (on the Internet), and they stay in the computer."

Despite Web speculation that a resurrection could be in the works, Polaroid remains mum.

A spokeswoman did not respond to interview requests before press time.

In the meantime, young fans such as Vogel and Kanan are bracing for the worst.

Vogel is planning to use her next paycheck to scoop up some instant film. When the stores run out, she'll be forced to resort to a task she hates — shopping for film on the Web.

Kanan figures she'll have to give in and buy a digital camera.

"It's cool," she said, "but it's not Polaroid."

corilyn.shropshire@chron.com