…And There It Is
Polaroid’s SX-70. It won’t let you stop.
Suddenly you see a picture everywhere you look…
now you press the red electric button. Whirr…whoosh
…and there it is. You watch and your picture comes to life,
growing more vivid, more detailed, until minutes later
you have a print as real as life. Soon you’re taking rapid-fire shots
-as fast as every 1.5 seconds!- as you search for new angles
or make copies on the spot. The SX-70 becomes like a part
of you, as it slips through your life effortlessly…
-advertisement (1975)
Last night a group of us discussed the effect of “technology,” the products and practices coming in rapid succession from Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, which we are offered by enveloping, seductively produced advertising, The advertising itself is example of application of the latest tools afforded by our technology. Our discussion touched upon the many ways that technology, primarily the combination of hardware and software programming has made life more convenient, less encumbered by layers of human participation, as well as less rich in social interaction. It was almost too easy to find examples, since for us, relatively well-to-do Americans, economic circumstance is not a barrier to what we desire.
A member of our circle of participants observed that speed is the value, the desideratum of much technological development.
The quotation is a print advertisement from the late 20th century, an artifact revealing the point of view of decision makers of the Polaroid Land Company. As true as the description certainly proved to be, — is there not something sad about the promise of speed, the acceleration of the rapid-fire, copies on the spot? What is lost as a consequence of a new capability? As with the discovery of something new, is something is lost as well as something found?
Have we lost the ability, the skill of allowing experience to develop, to mature in it’s own time, demanding effort, uninterrupted by the freeze frame of multiple photographs?
Do we not “just feel” (or fear) that raw experience is somehow less real, if it is not photographed?
2 thoughts on “…And There It Is”
Regarding Polaroid photography you wrote, “Is there not something sad about the promise of speed, the acceleration of the rapid-fire, copies on the spot?”
What an odd perspective! “Sad”? During WWII, my 4-F dad earned extra money by taking his new Polaroid camera out to bars at night and offering to take patrons’ photos for $10. The people were thrilled to watch the print develop before their eyes, and to have a quick collective souvenir of their revelry. The transaction couldn’t have happened without Polaroid’s then-modern rapid-development technology, and everyone went home happy.
What is “sad” about that? Yes, photography is a serious art form, but that doesn’t preclude its use for fun. Sunday newspaper comics don’t diminish Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
There is nothing sad about your story.
The point of the Polaroid advert that was quoted, is the speed inherent in the near instant development of a photo. Of course it was delightful, and worth paying for as your dad discovered, to his benefit. The sadness comes with the aggregate speeding up of so many mundane transactions, and the effect upon our expectations. I think the question is worth considering:
Have we lost the ability, the skill of allowing experience to develop, to mature in it’s own time, demanding effort, uninterrupted by the freeze frame of multiple photographs?