Maybe the title should read Gaga goes Polaroid. That would be better for search engine optimization. Nobody wants to know about Polaroid. Lady Gaga however is a much healthier search term. Anyway, you may have heard: Lady Gaga is the new Creative Director of Polaroid. It is printed on her business card, so it must be true.
To alienate those who have fond memories of Polaroid’s instant photographs and their used-to-be-trendy shades, she claims that her goal is to bring back artistry in commercial products. According to Gaga Polaroid is the highest standard in photography and a lifestyle.
The word lifestyle seems so 20th Century to me, but I gladly forgive her. The highest standard in photography? Oh, come on. We have heard that before. Polaroid cameras used to deliver unique but poor quality images. A good selling point if you tend to worry about the basic goal of all photography — to deliver high quality images that are easy to reproduce.
So, on and off Polaroid’s salesmen have been approaching artists with catchy phrases: “Look man, this is no photograph. This is unique! It is art!” Right. The sleaziest photographs I have ever come across, while collecting material for Amea’s Vintage photographs were made on a Polaroid.
Forget lifestyle, forget art, Polaroid used to be the ideal medium for amateur pornographers, voyeurs, kidnappers, terrorists — well, you know all those people one would expect to be too scared or too hypocritical to have their images developed at the local pharmacy.
These same people now buy cheap digital cameras. So why should Polaroid make a come-back? Lady Gaga does not seem to know. Nor does the sales rep who talks about “a whole new line of products” without naming one in particular.
Well, if they do not know themselves, I will tell them: more crappy cameras producing more crappy prints using technology that is not patented by them as the instant films once were. They will have to compete for a change. You can see for yourself how your lifestyle will look like according to Gaga: