The tangible instant

I was lucky enough to get a preview of the Drake-Devonshire Inn last week, despite the quality of my poetry.

One thing that struck me as a quaint touch was the old-fashioned photo booth, with its curved edges, a not-very-private curtain and a turquoise stool onto which two people can just squeeze. The gimmick, of course, is that the booth spits out a keepsake photograph for you if you wait a minute or two—two strips of four snapshots for five bucks. Upon further inquiry, I was told the booth is a Drake Hotel signature touch.

The booth struck a chord with me, partly because it reminded me of my teenaged years wasted hanging around the milkshake counter at Kresge’s, and also because it wasn’t long ago that I read about the revival of the instant film camera—once known as the brand named Polaroid, at least until that company stopped making them in 2008. The current mass market version of the instant camera, the Fujifilm Instax, is—according to the proprietor of Henry’s Camera Stores—flying off the shelves. The camera retails for about $100, and is available in retro colours pink, yellow, blue, white and black, together with a starter film kit.

And who is using these cameras? Everyday consumers, of course—although there is also a market in restaurants, where servers can snap a keepsake picture of everyone in the party—as well as in penitentiaries and accounting firms.

Penitentiaries and accounting firms? More white collar crime making people wishful for a snapshot? The explanation is more banal: the pictures are used in identification badges. Although I still wonder why the demand is so acute in those two institutions.

Not surprisingly, a Fujifilm corporate communications spokesperson is bullish on the camera’s prospects. “There’s a lot more to do with your photo now that the output is something tangible,” he notes.

Another company has developed a film product to be used by the estimated 200 million orphaned Polaroid cameras still lying around in basements all over the world. And a couple of Toronto wedding photographers are offering instant film packages. “I think there’s a certain reaction against digital technology and culture,” said one.

So are we onto some sort of trend here, or am I just grasping at straws in the wind? How about the fact that iTunes digital music sales are trending downwards and that sales of turnables and vinyl are rocketing upwards? (The biggest sellers are indie acts, which indicates I don’t understand what the word indie means, because I had assumed it meant small sellers.)

How about Hanx Writer, a program that allows an Apple iPad user to replicate the sound and feel of an old manual typewriter on the touch keyboard? The program was developed in conjuntion with multipurpose icon Tom Hanks, who has a collection of vintage typewriters, and who just happens to fit the demographic profile of its likely users, having just produced the CNN documentary series on the 1960s.

In fact, the more I asked myself, “I wonder if they have one of those,” the more my question seemed to be answered in the affirmative. Do they have a rotary dial application for a digital phone? Of course they do. Want to add a sound effect that simulates an old fashioned adding machine? It’s there. Want to simulate cursive writing from your keyboard (and if you’ve ever seen my handwriting, you’d say “yes, a thousand times, yes”)? It’s no problem.

At this point, I’ve almost boxed myself in to argue it’s terrible how dehumanizing the computer era has become, how the decline of the teaching of longhand writing is destroying the foundations of society, and how we should all pen handwritten letters rather than emails to demonstrate how much we care for each other. Well, I was sort of headed in that direction. The problem is that the argument can quickly be reduced to absurd proportions. For example, we must have been better off in the days before the printing press came along, because the printing press interposed an artifice into more personal and direct forms of communication. On the other hand, ask me whether I would prefer to have my car break down on the 401 with or without a cellphone.

So my point must be a modest one. Simply put, the digital era tends to disembody our means of communication. Every so often, we push back because we miss the tangible (to use the Fujifilm spokeeprson’s language). I predict sales of Instax cameras will continue to rise. And the Drake-Devonshire Inn— or at least its signature old- fashioned photo booth, with its curved edges, not-very-private curtain and turquoise stool onto which two people can just squeeze—will be well used.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca