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Thursday, March 12, 2020

Polaroid - An all Encompassing Moment In my Hand


Alexandra Elizabeth


Thinning out files of lawyers and businesspeople  is onerous but not heart wrenching. Sifting through many hundreds of family pictures is heart wrenching. And it cannot be a quick deal as I must stop and show Rosemary, “Look at this picture of Hilary. Do you remember?”

Today I found and made a pile of about 32 Polaroids. Our daughters are pre-teenagers. The camera in question was a Polaroid SX-70. It compensated for so-so photographs by the virtue that they were instantaneous. In Spanish a snap is called an instantánea. I wrote about the history of Polaroid here.

With further thought today it occurred to me that a Polaroid is an example of an all-encompassing object that is a memory and I can hold in my hand. There is no negative in the files or a picture in the back display of my Fuji X-E3. The Polaroid is that moment in the past somehow becoming an instant as I retrieve the place and the time.

It is magic.


Rosemary, Hilary Anne & Alexandra, bottom left



At the Space Needle







With Silas Huckleback in North Vancouver


My movie star Rosemary






Hilary in Burnaby
















Rebecca Anne - Hilary's daughter