Suitably nestled in the elegant yet hip Born district and barely a block from the city’s Photographic archive, The Impossible Project threw open its doors in December 2011, with other shops already enjoying cult status in Berlin, Vienna and New York. The managers of this branch, Isabel and Jorge, also own Chandal - the Raval-based home of kitsch photography paraphernalia - so are perfectly positioned to understand the venture that has led to a cult renaissance in Instant Photography.
The Impossible Project began in 2008 with Polaroid’s announcement that production would be ceased at its Netherlands-based factory, in the (mistaken) belief that there was simply no space for them as our world shifted towards a digital future. Panic swept through the Polaroid community in the realisation that over 300 million cameras were destined to become nothing more than unusable and obsolete relics from the dusty past of our analog ancestors.
Thank heavens that the factory manager André Bosman and Austrian entrepreneur Florian Kaps saw the potential for a solution to enable the survival of tangible instant film. Looking to mirror Polaroid’s passion for creativity yet going far beyond in terms of innovation, The Impossible Project was born with a mission to produce pioneering chemical formulas, pushing fresh instant film onto the market for its hungry underground following. The shop is a haven of retro photography with its feet firmly in the twenty-first century, housing a gallery for new talent, original Polaroid cameras and of course, fresh cassettes of Impossible Project-made film. The rest is instant history.
See published article here
Text © Natasha Drewnicki 2011.
Photography © Shopikon. All Rights Reserved.
