Recently, I was walking around my old neighborhood, the Upper West side, on my way to the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center for a photography class. As I walked I reflected on how much has changed in the past couple of months and how I could have lived so close to this film center and never known about it. From what my professor has told us about today’s class this center sounded exciting and I was bummed that I had never visited it before today, especially when I use to live only 5 minutes away. One of the reasons this center sounded so exciting was because it was home to a 20x24 Polaroid camera, a camera that I was lucky enough to get to work with.
I told the woman who was standing at the door that I was there for the photography class and she directed me to the second door on the left. As I opened the heavy door, I was greeted with a slight smell of chemicals. I looked along the walls and saw large photos of different celebrities hung on the wall and as my eyes scanned the room I spotted it… the 20x24 Polaroid camera.
Around 6:30pm, once the rest of my fellow classmates had found the room, my professor announced that today we would each be using the Polaroid Camera.
Wait, what? I would get to take a photo on a camera I couldn’t stop taking pictures of? The sitter would get to keep the photo of him/herself AND we would only be able to do this once because the film is so expensive!?! ? No pressure.
The instructor, the owner or the camera and his assistant, started demonstrating how the camera worked. They then did a few test shots of each other to make sure the settings were correct. The class partnered up and began taking their single shots of each other. Flash, wait, peel, flash, wait, peel, and on it went until it was my partner and I's turn. We had previously discussed what we wanted our individual photo to look like and I had warned her about my tendency to blink whenever flash was involved, but it was our turn. There was no more putting it off. I lined up my sitter how I wanted her to show up on the page. This was done by moving the large camera back and forth until she was in position. (This was all while looking at her upside down) When the back door to the camera was closed, I went to the front and was handed a cord with a button on the end. We talked for a minute then …. Click!
