Impossible Project Launch Pop Up in Store At Selfridges

Celebrating the company’s fifth anniversary, Impossible today announced the launch of its first UK retail space.

Impossible will open the Impossible Pop-Up Space on the lower-ground floor of Selfridges’ stunning, award-winning department store in London, on Thursday, 23rd October. The space will celebrate Impossible’s approach to analog for a digital generation and feature the full range of Impossible instant film for classic Polaroid 600, SX-70 and Image/Spectra cameras, a carefully curated selection of collectible Custom Edition Polaroid cameras, each artfully refurbished at Impossible’s workshops in New York and Enschede, in the Netherlands, and a constantly changing gallery of Impossible instant photography.

The Impossible Pop-Up Space will also host the global launch of the Instant Lab Universal, a unique, Impossible-designed device that transforms digital images on iOS or Android smart phones and tablets into classic Polaroid-format instant pictures. A unique, very limited Gold Edition Instant Lab will be available exclusively to those Selfridge customers who are most passionate about analog media.

This will also be the first time that the original Polaroid instant cameras, which have been favoured for forty years by legendary photographers such as the late Helmut Newton and Andy Warhol, will have been available at Selfridges. Today, these cameras are collected and used by a younger generation, from Lana Del Rey and James Franco to Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus.

Impossible’s Polaroid instant cameras have been sourced from around the world and lovingly re-tooled and refurbished at the company’s busy workshops on both sides of the Atlantic.

Impossible also manufactures more than 30 different analog instant films, featuring not only different coloured frames – black, silver, gold, and multiple colours, as well as tropical and animal skin prints – but also different coloured film emulsions, including sepia, cyan and magenta. The Impossible Pop-Up Space will also stock the recently released Impossible X Lulu Guinness Limited Edition Colour SX-70 Film.

The Impossible gallery will be curated monthly by selected Impossible artists, beginning with Andrew Millar, one of the UK’s most noted instant artists. There will also be daily workshops and demonstrations, giving instant photography fans hands-on opportunities to expand their understanding of the medium and its creative techniques. There will be a Polaroid camera hire service for enthusiasts, corporate event managers and professional image-makers

This Impossible Pop-Up Space will be also be a meeting point for well-known British artists, photographers, editors and curators with a common interest in analog media.
Creed O’Hanlon, the CEO of Impossible, explains: “Since closing our own retail outlets earlier this year, we’ve focused on a series of partnerships with major, non-photographic retailers in selected European cities – Selfridges, of course, but also Colette and Bon Marché in Paris, Coin in Milan, and even Apple’s European stores. They all understand and like the immersive, inspiring, physical experience we want to give our customers. Indeed, we want to give everyone, not just instant photography fans, a chance to explore this medium, which is much more tangible and meaningful than the digital visual media which suffuses most of our lives these days.”