The Man Who Saved Polaroid

Even if you don't know what Polaroid is, the story of how a symbol of an era vanished and came back is worth a look.

For many people, the Polaroid era ended in 2008, when the last roll of film came off the line. For others, nothing called Polaroid ever entered their lives.

That gap is what we found most interesting when we talked about Florian Kaps and Impossible, his project to revive Polaroid. Compared with the people who mourn Kodak, those who miss Polaroid today are fewer and more artistic, and many have forgotten that it was once a camera that ordinary people lived with. Like Steve Jobs, its founder, the physicist Edwin H. Land, set out to make products that "combine technology and beauty." When photographs were still a luxury, this instant camera won over a great many people. Today its main buyers are fashionable young people, and they use it for very different reasons.

We met Florian Kaps in Beijing. Before we get to him, here is a quick history of Polaroid:

About 70 years ago, the American Edwin H. Land developed instant photography. Four years later, the Polaroid company Land ran launched the world's first instant camera, the Polaroid 95, at US$89.75 apiece. Later came the SX-70, a model now revered as a classic.

In 1991, Polaroid's revenue hit a peak of roughly US$23 billion a year, and Wall Street for a time regarded its stock as the safest investment there was.

In 2001, weighed down by debt, Polaroid filed for bankruptcy protection in a US court.

In 2008, Polaroid's last factory in the world, a film plant in Enschede, the Netherlands, announced that it would stop making T600, the last Polaroid film.

A Polaroid camera has no battery of its own; a battery built into the film pack powers it. Without the right film, a Polaroid can never again make the whirring, tearing sound of a picture being "made."

In 2008, a few months before the Enschede factory was due to close, Florian Kaps, one of Polaroid's distributors in Vienna, and his team announced that they would buy this last production line, and signed a 10-year lease on the property.

Eighteen months later, the team, now called Impossible, launched two films for the SX-70 in New York. The first batches had a string of problems: leaking chemicals, failed images, washed-out colors and very slow development. Nor could they develop instantly, as Polaroid film had before the shutdown. Impossible's film had to be shielded from light for 5 minutes after each shot, and then you had to wait patiently about 10 minutes for the image to appear.

Kaps had approached Fujifilm, whose Instax instant film sold at half Polaroid's price, hoping to buy its technology, but he got nowhere. After a period of transition, Impossible found its own rhythm, releasing a new product as often as every two months — color film, black-and-white film, film with colored frames — and covering more Polaroid models. To make things more fun, it slipped an off-the-cuff illustration into every box of film, with lines such as "Before using a Polaroid, take your clothes off..."

The company has grown from fewer than 20 people in 2008 to 130, with 2 factories and 8 offices around the world. Whatever its commercial fortunes, Impossible has at least brought Polaroid back. In China, you can find the film on Taobao for more than 140 yuan a box of 8 shots.

Last week, Florian Kaps and Lomo Commune, Impossible's official partner in China, held a workshop in Beijing. Lomo Commune first worked with Impossible in 2011 and opened a space called Impossible BJ. In 2013 it invited the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki to shoot on Impossible film for an exhibition called "Photo-Mad Old Man A."

That same year, Kaps "retired" from Impossible. He now runs Supersense, a space in Vienna where visitors can try out photographic crafts. He brought this kind of workshop to China, and I talked with him about Polaroid and Impossible.

Q: People like to put "Doc" in the middle of your name. Where does that come from?

F: It's my nickname. I have a PhD in biology. I studied at the University of Vienna for six years.

Q: How did you first come across Polaroid? And why did you want to start Impossible?

F: Like many people, I bought my first Polaroid at a market, in 2004. Many others had parents who owned one. In 2005 I became a Polaroid distributor in Vienna, and after that I worked with Polaroid a great deal. I felt that in the digital age, traditional photographic techniques and crafts had become, if anything, more worth exploring. That wasn't a whim; I really did see opportunities.

Q: Polaroid's inventor, Edwin Land, once said: "Don't undertake a project unless it's manifestly important and nearly impossible." I've read that you agree strongly with this, and that it helped push you to start Impossible. Is that why you chose the name? What does the line mean to you?

F: I think it means that these days, what people do every day is less and less challenging. Sometimes we should do things almost nobody has done. People may say you're crazy, but you believe in yourself. Whether others think it can work doesn't matter; what matters is that you believe you can do it. Impossible really means "I'm possible." That's what the line means to me, and it's also an honest picture of how I negotiated with the Polaroid factory and finally bought it. I told them: you don't have to "kill the child" — you can "find someone to adopt it."

Q: How much did you pay for that last Polaroid factory in the Netherlands?

F: We paid 180,000 euros for it, and the next year we spent 1.8 million euros developing the product and restarting the production line.

Q: It took you 18 months to launch a new film. Was that what you expected, or faster, or slower? What did you mainly do in those 18 months?

F: The timing was all right. To me it felt a bit slow, but for those machines it was fast; we were redeveloping the film from zero. So we were already quite lucky.

Q: Why did you have to develop the product from zero?

F: For one thing, the old raw materials were no longer available. Polaroid's factories in 60 countries each made different components, and by 2008 many materials had been discontinued and the stocks used up.

Q: Did you ever think of buying instant-film technology from Fujifilm?

F: I did go to Japan, through an introduction from a Polaroid manager. In fact, Fujifilm had been waiting for exactly this moment, Polaroid's bankruptcy. Polaroid cost about twice as much as Fujifilm, so once Polaroid faltered, Fujifilm rose. Our talks didn't go well. One scene stuck with me: at the end, the Fujifilm people took what was left of the calendar off the wall and gave it to me. Still, there's no denying that Fujifilm has helped push the instant-photo market forward.

Q: In 2008 you bought the last Polaroid film factory. From acquiring a technology, to turning it into a project, to turning it into a business — what was the biggest change along the way?

F: I think the biggest change was this: at first I was used to running a small team, and then the company grows, there are branches in Tokyo, New York and Paris, and I had to keep expanding the business. At the very start, 10 people on our team came from the Polaroid factory, and 5 to 10 handled day-to-day operations. When I left Impossible in 2013, we had 110 employees worldwide.

Q: Do you mind telling us why you left Impossible?

F: The company was getting more and more complicated, and I also had family reasons. Another part of it is that Polaroid's users are now the next generation, and a younger team should lead it.

Q: When I hear people talk about Impossible, the phrase they use is "reviving Polaroid." First of all, do you think that's accurate?

F: The fact is, a Polaroid camera can only be used if there is film; otherwise it's just an ornament. Impossible's production put Polaroid cameras back into use, and that's what I'm most proud of.

Q: In making film again, apart from changing the manufacturing process and the raw materials, what was worth keeping, and what needed to change or be upgraded?

F: There's a lot that can be improved. Color film, for example: its development time and image quality can keep getting better. Impossible now produces a new batch of products every two months, and part of that is us continually refining the process.

Q: Do you take pictures with an iPhone? What about digital cameras from Canon or Nikon? What's the biggest difference between them and a Polaroid?

F: I only shoot with an iPhone and a Polaroid SX-70. Shooting with an iPhone is more casual: you see something you want to shoot, you capture it quickly, and you keep it in your photo album as a memory. But those are just images that call up my memories. A Polaroid is a more real presence.

Q: If you had to describe Polaroid in a few words, what would they be?

F: Real, unique, expensive, lifelike, and "yours."

Q: Isn't being expensive a drawback?

F: I actually think it's one of its great strengths. If you shoot digitally, you take 2,000 pictures, but you'll probably never go back and look at them one by one. With a Polaroid, the practical limits mean you can't shoot very many, so you look at each one more carefully, and they become more special. What's scarce is precious.

Q: How would you define The Instant Lab, the product you launched on Kickstarter in 2012, and why did you develop it? As the founder of Impossible, do you see Polaroid as a product about the past, or about the future?

F: It was the first product to recreate Polaroid from digital images: it uses the iPhone's screen as the light source for the exposure, and the device forms a tiny darkroom. It combines modern digital technology with chemical craft. On one hand, it connects to your phone, so you have a huge range of images to choose from; on the other, you can actually hold those images in your hand. I think Polaroid will be a product connected to the digital world in the future too. That is both the present and the future, and we can't avoid it.

Q: Many people take up Polaroid out of nostalgia. For some it's a link to childhood; others fell in love with it after watching the film Love Letter. But this is the digital age, and the way people take pictures has changed completely. How will Impossible win new Polaroid fans? How would you introduce it to young people who know nothing about it?

F: If young people want to explore, there are plenty of ways for them to learn about Polaroid, and I run workshops around the world when it makes sense. But I generally don't tell people what they should or shouldn't do. If they're interested, they'll come on their own.

Q: As for the old Polaroid fans — how did you tell Polaroid owners around the world that Impossible film had arrived? What kind of response did you get?

F: We tried many things, but we have networks, online and offline, that we can use to get the word out.

Q: Are Polaroid users in China different from those elsewhere?

F: Not really. Polaroid fans everywhere are young, and getting younger. They love art, and then they discover Polaroid.

Q: Beijing and Shanghai both have small Polaroid-themed camera shops. What do you make of them?

F: I'm very interested in shops like that. I especially like spaces of that kind, and nine months ago I started something similar in Vienna. It's called Supersense; it's in a local museum, and it's a space that offers workshops.

Q: In your view, is Polaroid for the mass market or for a niche?

F: To me it's for everyone, but in practice it's mostly young people who choose it. And Impossible also works with artists like Nobuyoshi Araki.

Q: I know of a collector in Hong Kong, TM, who owns several thousand Polaroid cameras. He even set a world record for it, and he often puts them on show. Which is better: collecting Polaroids or using them?

F: I think both are good. What matters is that everyone does what they want with a Polaroid: you can make art, you can record daily life. I'm very glad people want to do that.