365:352 GERT JAN COLE

Polaroid backs for my Bronica ETRS analogue medium format camera are quite rare. However, in recent years you see them popping up every now and then; since the matching peel-apart film packs are no longer available, these backs basically became paperweights. So I got excited when someone offered a Polaroid back online *including two Polaroid 107 film packs, in foil*. These specific film packs had not been produced for decades, so they had to be very old. And indeed, they were 45 years past their expiration date.

On Sunday we drove 70 kilometers to pick up the combo and immediately went on to visit our daughter and her family to test it out. Our 3-year-old grandson Juda was very excited to be a model, blissfully unaware he was being shot on a film that was produced when his grandpa was his age. To be honest, I was not expecting anything to appear on the paper at all. The sensitivity of the film must have decreased enormously (which I hoped to compensate by overexposing three stops) and the chemicals of the developer had been enjoying their retirement since 1977 (which I hoped to compensate for by giving them three times more time than prescribed to do their job).

See more of Gert’s work on the website and a full post on the making of this picture.