Polaroid announced it will cease production of its instant film, making only enough to last into next year, according to The Globe.

As many of you know, I have been on the trail of the Polaroid Bandit for coming on two years now.  The Bandit sticks reproductions of his or her Polaroids on the backs of street signs, on posts and poles in public places, in Cambridge, mostly, but I have found his or her handiwork in Somerville and Boston as well, most recently near the corner of Park and Tremont, on a post at the entrance to The Common...


This latest news of the film's demise, makes my search all the more urgent, and poignant.  As it is, each one I find fills me with nostalgia for moments they've captured that might as well be my own.  Now, added to this sweet sense of bygone moments is the realization that bygone moments eventually turn to bygone eras.  That the very means of capturing these moments of light and shadow will soon be no more.  That a way of seeing, a way of showing, a way of speaking — a dialect of our visual language is dying.