The immediacy of a Polaroid is one of it's strongest features. Involvement in the photo and the Polaroid's ability to co-exist with the subject that it is based on is amazing and mind blowing. A photo which is usually just a recorder of "reality" can become the subject. You can take a photo of a Polaroid. (Wow!) Do these sound like the musings of a nut? Someone who is dedicated to a format that is inferior, but cannot see his own folly? I think not. There's just some quantity about the Polaroid that can speak to the concept of the moment, the "Decisive Moment," that makes it a better medium. blurryness, the strange colours, the the constricted size all have more to do with how the human brain works, then any video recorder, 8x10 view camera, and 35mm "idiot camera."
Polaroids can be superior. They stike a chord in me that most other photographic processes can't. There's juxtaposition of immediacy and age, clearness and obstruction that make the Polaroid one of my processes of choice.
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I challenge the assumption that Polaroid photos aren't
"real" art objects. As you can clearly see, this is a bit of a
pet peeve to me. There are many people that I encounter that seem to think
that the quick Polaroid photgraph is ugly, small, blurry, and the colours
aren't true to life. While many other "professional" photographers
concede that the Polaroid is an invaluable tool for use in preperation for
the actual shot. I however don't believe in these arguments. The critics
of this process are way off base.
The Polaroid is very much like memory, blurry, indistinct,
and most of all, stonger in many cases then "reality" ever was.
When you take this kind of Polaroid, you have a look of "instant age"
that is missing in most photography. You don't have to wait for clothes
to go out of style, or for photos to fade, the Polaroid is succesful in
this respect.