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Jack White Gets Down with Black & Yellow Polaroid Film

The Impossible Project has released a limited run of Polaroid stock to match Third Man Records’ signature colors.
Photo: Angelina Castillo. Images courtesy The Impossible Project

The Impossible Project, an effort to sustain Polaroid film stock, cameras, and culture, might want to rethink the “impossible” part: though the Polaroid company no longer exists, and the project still faces an uphill battle to keep the dream alive, they’ve certainly carved out a nice little niche in the field of photography, laying the foundation for a future with Polaroid photographs.

The Project's most recent endeavor, a collaboration with Jack White’s Third Man Records on a run of black-and-yellow instant film stock, only reaffirms how vital analog photography can be in this era of quick Instagram filters and other imaging apps. It’s proof that a really great photograph is far more rare than our smartphones and social media apps would have us believe.

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Photo: David Swanson

The black-and-yellow film stock is limited to 10,000 packs. It works with original Polaroid 600 cameras and the Impossible Instant Lab Universal, as well as with Polaroid SX70 cameras when used with an ND filter.

Says The Impossible Project’s CEO Oskar Smolokowski, he knew White was a big Polaroid fan, and an Impossible user as well. “We always wanted to collaborate with him and Third Man Records on something as they have the same spirit of making and love of analog that we do,” says Smolokowski. “So when the guys at our factory created a black and yellow film, it was the perfect reason to get in touch with Jack and Third Man. One of our artists introduced us directly to the guys at the start of this year.”

Photo: Patrick Pantano

“We're always experimenting on new films, probably more than we should be,” Smolokowski says. “A duo chrome was one of the things we really wanted to make happen, and we decided that yellow would be the first line of attack. So we based the film on the current B&Y Gen 2.0, and tweaked it until it worked and we could recreate it reliably, and then the idea to reach out to Third Man came about.”

Once they met with White, it didn’t take much convincing. Smolokowski says that they agreed up on all aspects of how the Black and Yellow run should be done based on that one conversation. One of the things The Impossible Project and White hammered out were the details of an exhibition to be held at Third Man’s office in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Photo: Toby Hancock

White himself selected the photographers for the show. Those photographers exhibiting will be Patrick Pantano, who did the cover design for the White Stripes' White Blood Cells and Elephant albums; Third Man's Angelina Castillo; and David Swanson, who has worked on tour with Jack White.

In total, 24 photographs will be shown. Smolokowski says The Impossible Project blew the photos up to 1m x 1mm, “which is going to make them really impactful, especially in the Blue Room—turning it into a gallery space.” Swanson’s photographs come from a two-week period during which he was frequently traveling. Locations include the cities of Nashville, Seattle and Los Angeles, as well as the states of Montana, Idaho, and Michigan.

Photo: Angelina Castillo

“The photographs are mostly of my favorite things or things that have influenced me: baseball, my daughter, cheeseburgers, Seattle, Halloween, The Dead Weather, my band Whirlwind Heat, and crab, representing Baltimore where I grew up,” says Swanson.

After shooting with The Impossible Project’s film, Swanson realized he preferred flash, finding that it made the yellow “pop.” “The film has amazing contrast and any images on a bright background are fantastic,” he adds. “I also tried to shoot simple subjects on a bright background so the yellow really showed.”

Pantano, on the other hand, has always liked shooting Polaroids because of, he says, a belief in that adage that nothing important ever happens on purpose.

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Photo: David Swanson

“No matter how much I do it, there still seems to be an unknown variable at hand,” Pantano explains. “These black and yellow film packs that the Impossible Project made were really great to shoot with, especially in the beginning. I didn't really have a solid grip on how they would behave, so I ended up with some really cool stuff.”

“In an effort to expand the limitations of the film I thought to paint the final shots with photo ink,” he adds. “As a homage to Tyree Guyton I started putting blue dots all over them. I applied the dots with an eye dropper, again to bring in a more random variable. It's really hard to control the shape and size of the dots when you use a dropper. I tried to do as much as I could to relinquish control over the final image. I think things work out better that way.”

Click here to learn more about The Impossible Project's new Black & Yellow Film.

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