Faded — Recovered — Scanned — Delight
Many years ago when film was plentiful and Polaroid made film for my medium format RB-67 I used to peel the photographs from my Polaroid back and throw them away.
Photographers have a way of not following rules so soon a few had found out that the peels (they were negative-like) of Polaroid Colour Instant Film did not fade and that they could be scanned. It seems that Polaroid peels (as I call them) were in wait of a technology (scanners) that made them relevant and in many ways quite beautiful.
Polaroid Instant Film (not the Instamatic kind) is dead. For a few years we photographers switched to unusually good Fuji Film FP-300B B+W and FP-100C Colour. The former now discontinued produced negatives that partially solarized. The scanning results were most interesting. The latter colour film has been recently discontinued but there are rumours that Fuji is going to manufacture it in batches.
The initial problem with the Fuji Instant Colour peels is that the image fades in short minutes. I have been able to take the peel to a waiting scanner and produce a sort of Polaroid transfer (as they used to be called). The peel itself when carefully bleached makes a strange sort-of-negative. My friend baroque bassist Curtis Daily and I compared notes on the process and have found a foolproof method for bleaching them without flaws.
I have a box with at least 100 of these that now that Daily and I have our method, I will be treating in the near future.
This one of Lauren is a tad underexposed but with the help of m 13-year-old Photoshop and Corel XII’s “Clarify” tool I have been able to get a lovely image of her that makes me smile when I look at it.
Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.
