Starting at the End..

Back in June I must have caught the bus to work (meaning I stayed at the boy's house the night before) therefore missing picking up my daily copy of The Metro and so I was reading one of those magazines that the companies send to camera shops promoting their products that I usually would just think of as junky articles written by bird watchers who own cameras and that uncle who is always going to do some 'nice' photos of the family when you ask if they need any professional photography done. The thing was this magazine was actually quite good and gave details about a photography conference which was coming up later on in the year in Germany called Photokina. I went back downstairs and as it was photo-related I had a google and saw what it was all about and the dates lined up perfectly with me wanting to go to Oktoberfest.

When I got an email from the Impossible Project calling for volunteers for an exceptional soriee in Cologne (where Photokina is held bi-yearly) I was certainly excited and replied straight away hoping that I would be chosen to help out. Luckily, I was and after a great day venturing around the city (stay tuned for that one) I found the art gallery that the Impossible Project were holding their event in and after meeting the the lovely Marlene, even though I was there to help supervise with food and beverage I got to work pinning some cute little polaroid shaped pins with hearts on them through some cards telling the VERY summarized story of Impossible- "The new heart beat of analog Instant photography. Impossible manufactures fresh instant films for traditional Polaroid cameras at the original production plantinEnschede (NL). Keeping variety, tangibility and creativity alive, Impossible prevents more than 300 million perfectly functioning cameras from becoming obsolete and thus changes the world of photography"

After I got started with that I was joined by a lovely and talented girl Candace (who has also written about the experience in her blogs 'Mission Impossible Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3') and we got sent on a variety of little jobs including picking up the most amount of bread i've ever carried, cutting up 3kgs of onions- i'm still apologizing to my eyes for that one doing that in an unventilated kitchen and cutting through two wheels of cheese all the way from Holland where the Impossible plant is.

We were lucky enough to hear the speech that Florian Kaps (founder of the Impossible Project) was giving and learn the back story behind his efforts to save the instant film and cameras from distinction and learnt how impossible the whole process really seemed and it was so inspiring hearing how it has come together and how it is still evolving.

Everyone in the audience from the Asian investors to the ex art school volunteers like me were then treated to, Jan Hnizdo who, as Candace put it in her blog, is the Ansel Adams of the Polaroid world.' Using the 'Fabled' (only 7 were ever made and this was one of the ones that still exist) polaroid 20x24 camera and we saw the experiments with different lighting techniques available with this kind of machinery and the different results with the new Impossible film.

After the talk we visited the exhibition upstairs of various artists which had been trying out some of the Impossible projects films including Lia Saile who is the talented girl who makes the newsletters that we get every week who we had been chatting to throughout the day. Marlene then loaded Candace and I up with enough Impossible film to last us a good few series worth as well as a storage box and some other little goodies..

It was all a great opportunity and I met some amazing people and learnt and fell even more in love with Impossible's venture into bringing back the instant.. and so that brings me to why I started my travel stories at the end, because I am very excited to be getting more involved with anything other than digital right now. My Colorsplash or my polaroid have been what are attached at the index finger and i'm going to be entering into an art exhibit tomorrow with the impossible's i've taken... Wish me luck :)