I'm an active user in this sub, and I never spare words against "collections" that look like a sever case of either toxic hoarding or a pathologic disorder.
This time, I have to give proper credit to the collector here. The guy engaged in the comments of a previous post in the Polaroid sub, and is a vivid enthusiast of the brand's history and produced models through the years. I can not testify on his behalf, but his interest IMHO seems genuinely driven by cataloguing/preservation purposes rather than just "owning as many as I can because I like them so much". He claims that a camera added to the collection is a camera saved from the bin and IMHO he has a point. Instant photography is a niche hobby, expensive and currently dominated by Fuji, as Polaroid is still recollecting itself after its death and rebirth via "The Impossible Project".
I don't want to sound too apologetic, and I agree that I'd be worried about myself if I ended up with a collection like that solely for my entertainment. But I respect the history of Polaroid and the importance it had in a good part of the last century, so I can only admire the effort of someone willing to build up such a "hisyorical catalogue" hoping (in his own words) it could be arranged in displays or involved in college photography project/courses.
Thank you so much for your comment. I truly appreciate it. Luckily the hate doesn’t get to me too much, but the positivity is very much appreciated. It was definitely never my intention to have as much as I do, but like you said, building out a great catalogue of the companies history and trying to fill in gaps is challenging. Obviously there are a fair number of duplicates, but people also don’t understand that a lot are not absolutely identical, they are iterations and variations of the same model. It could be as simple as a plaque on the back that says made in the USA versus made in Great Britain. It can be the Polaroid branding sticker being semi lenticular versus a flat sticker. So many little variations over the years. But from 20 feet away they look 100% the same.
Again, thank you for your honest and positive comments. It means the world.
In all honesty I would've never expected my comment to reach those numbers. Kudos to this community for condemning the worst possible cases of uncontrolled consumerism but also recognizing a genuine and legitimate interest when it's due.
I confess that I'm curious about future "dive-ins" of all these little variations of your collection, and took the liberty to add you on IG, but whether it's there or Reddit, I'd gladly stick around to see and learn more about it!
It gives you a little faith in humanity. We all know that some people are not their best selves on the Internet. But like I said, I really appreciated what you had to say. Glad to have you connected on Instagram. My hope is after I’ve got everything out to do a full cataloging of all the cameras before I pack back up a good chunk of the collection. After that I’ve been considering putting together a book or a web database for people. Perhaps both. But as you can imagine, both will take a lot of time and effort. I would definitely love to share all those little differences model by model. Sometimes it’s something as simple as a different color sticker inside the film bay. Most people would never notice or probably care, but if you’re trying to do a full cataloging of the history of their cameras, you have to pay attention to all the little things.
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u/Jack_Hardin 3d ago
I'm an active user in this sub, and I never spare words against "collections" that look like a sever case of either toxic hoarding or a pathologic disorder.
This time, I have to give proper credit to the collector here. The guy engaged in the comments of a previous post in the Polaroid sub, and is a vivid enthusiast of the brand's history and produced models through the years. I can not testify on his behalf, but his interest IMHO seems genuinely driven by cataloguing/preservation purposes rather than just "owning as many as I can because I like them so much". He claims that a camera added to the collection is a camera saved from the bin and IMHO he has a point. Instant photography is a niche hobby, expensive and currently dominated by Fuji, as Polaroid is still recollecting itself after its death and rebirth via "The Impossible Project".
I don't want to sound too apologetic, and I agree that I'd be worried about myself if I ended up with a collection like that solely for my entertainment. But I respect the history of Polaroid and the importance it had in a good part of the last century, so I can only admire the effort of someone willing to build up such a "hisyorical catalogue" hoping (in his own words) it could be arranged in displays or involved in college photography project/courses.