A damaged good

Photojournalist William Miller shows us what images he is able to develop using an old Polaroid SX-70 instant camera. Beautiful, ingenious, but almost completely broken.

It’s a masterpiece of engineering, a bundle of gears, buttons, levers. And it’s also completely foldable, so much so that you can put it in a pocket as if it were a leather and metal wallet.

Too bad they didn’t tell him at the flea market where he bought it that this instant SX-70 has its own way of working, and will often spit out two photos at a time.

So, just like an elderly painter who has forgotten how to paint the perfect portrait, this camera began acting up, and instead of photos, would produce abstract pictures.

William Miller was fascinated by the process with which the camera created each snapshot. But also by the result, in which shapes, colors and narrative aspects were each time surprisingly abstracted from a normal photo. As if a small, invisible artist were living inside the machine.

Instead of taking it back, Miller treasured his new possession, this photo camera with its unique limp that makes it differ from all the others, and that he jealously keeps a hold of.

As if an old (better to say "aged") technology refused to give up to the passage of time and the rise of the digital era. Instead of abandoning the field, it decides to face the day with pride. And a whole new style.

















Photos © williammillerphoto.com