“Let’s try this! This is so cool!” The tailor was so ready to test his old Polaroid camera. It was certainly the best idea ever! And bless his luck – there was even film in it! He had this passionate drive in him. When he got an idea, he desperately wanted to test it – good or bad, just go for it!
“A picture on me hand-washing…! Let’s try that!” As usual he was already set to make one of his updates for a customer of his and his many bespoke shirts, so why not use that as a test image…? “This is such a great idea!”
He did that a lot, hand-washed for customers. But only garments he had made for them of course. He did it to ensure that the garments had the best environment possible out there in the ‘real’ world, constantly treated with respect. He called it updates to stress that it wasn’t just about getting garments cleaned and pressed – they were also looked after, overviewed for wear and tear, there was mending, altering and also a collecting of information for the customers’ further garments to be made.
“Let’s do this!”
After waiting the usual amount of time you should with the old system Polaroid pictures, he quickly ripped off the front and… well…
Disappointment.
“It must be an old film then… Let’s see if we can find another one…” The picture was all bleached out. Didn’t look great at all.
Of course, an instant success wasn’t all that easy to obtain. He went looking for an unopened package of film, if there ever was one. And yes – there were actually a few of them! Again, he was lucky! “Let’s try again…!”
“Okay. Slightly better…!” The hand looked awful – unnatural and old. And the colours were off. And strangely enough, the framing of what he wanted to get into the picture was hopelessly difficult to get. “I guess this is what you get with instant cameras… They’re quick, but art it is not!” He quickly decided to take another one – just to be sure.
“I guess I just have to practice as I go along…” He felt that well-known creeping feeling of failure coming on. He knew it all to well from his tailoring trade where extreme passions rode high, but time, money and overall boundaries for working hours were seldom and far, and few, in-between.
He was determined though, to not let this set him back in any way. Okay, the pictures were not great – even he could see that. But he had to remember that that was not the main focus here. He knew all along that this project would be difficult, but the goal was to share knowledge and thoughts! That was important to keep in mind. Not to be the best in image-maker ever. Because that, he knew, he would never be.
As the hours went by, and he continued to work on his suits, he sometimes and in-between looked at his Polaroids. After a while he actually started to like them…! They had a certain very dreamlike feeling over them, as if they captured a time long since passed.