Many of us photograph with Polaroid cameras these days.

We all have the nice Polaroid images, the ones that we are proud to display in or show to others. Maybe you frame yours, buy an album for them, or create a wall display to show them off. Some people even submit them to gallery shows or magazine submissions.

But, what do we do with the bad images?

Blurry, underdeveloped, overdeveloped, bad film, or that fluke time when your camera just starts spitting them out. (That last one has actually happened to me!)

How do we honor what was, and is now fading?

Or what about the blur of movement during a special moment, or better still, the Polaroids that should simply be in the trash?

I have so many bad images that were because of expired film, from when I was learning that an SX-70 actually has a slow shutter feature. Many of my early Impossible Project images have began to fade into a cream color or grow darker brown. There are quite a few blurred images and quite a few from using 600 film in an unmodified SX-70. So many of these feel like wasted money, or lessons that it took me to long to learn.

One day in 2016, I decided to change the stories of these bad Polaroids. I took the bad images and began to allow words to form through using scrap paper and an old typewriter. I allowed whatever words that wanted, to come forth. I then decided to try to write with markers, and pens, the one day I decided to type on the images. I even began to stick them in a journal and to allow them to pull words there.

In spite of their lack of quality, clarity or sometimes the just complete failures of (my) skill or chemistry, they wanted to have a new life. They are being slowly becoming…rescued.

Click below to see the parts of the project