Gary Wong and his wall of Polaroid photos. Pictures: Shannon Ly

By SHANNON LY

In a tiny garage in residential Parkville, hundreds of Polaroid photos hang on the wall like a shrine in a teenager’s bedroom.

Each is a portrait of someone who visited the FilmNeverDie store as a friend, customer or tourist from interstate or overseas. They came to admire the many restored vintage cameras, shelves of boxed film and analogue paraphernalia carefully arranged on a display table.

The décor is a smorgasbord of coloured photo frames, pinpricked with white space and lovingly furnished with hardwood furniture. It’s visual candy for the kid in every film photographer.

Gary Wong sits at the back of the store, taking online orders on his laptop and tinkering with a Polaroid camera. He is 30 years old and the founder of FilmNeverDie, a store dedicated to selling film cameras and accessories.

His enthusiasm for instant film started when the nail in the coffin was being hammered for the industry’s biggest player. In 2008, Polaroid announced it would stop producing instant film at the end of the year.

The corporation filed for bankruptcy twice in the 2000s amid fraud allegations and the rise of digital photography. Had it not been for start-up company The Impossible Project deciding to buy the last Polaroid factory to produce its own instant film, FilmNeverDie would simply not exist.

“A few years ago, I bought my girlfriend a Polaroid camera, but I couldn’t get any film. Back then, the last Polaroid factory was shutting down, and the only way to get film was to buy in bulk from The Impossible Project factory. So I bought 60 packs, gave my girlfriend 10 and sold the rest on eBay, which is how I started the business,” Wong says.

It was 2010 and Wong had not been shooting film for very long, but he quickly sought the opportunity to grow FilmNeverDie as a local seller of instant film. He left a career in accounting the following year to pursue the business full-time.

“It took us about six months to go from being an eBay store to an online web store, and it took us two years to actually say, ‘Hey, we should actually start looking at a brick and mortar store’. And we used our garage, which we are quite lucky to have because it has a separate entry,” Wong says.

For those who remember Polaroid in its heyday, the marketing appeal was that you could have your picture as soon as you took it, and watch it develop before your eyes. Now, the reasons for shooting film relate more to keeping a traditional medium alive, and comparing its quality to digital pictures.

“I guess it’s just a matter of seeing the end results … and the mystery of shooting film,” Wong says.

“Also, new and younger people have started discovering film … even professionals are going back to film just because they can’t find that creativity shooting digital sometimes, because digital can be so fast-paced.

“They find themselves being more engaged.”

There is a common argument in the film versus digital debate – that film has a certain warmth, tonality and depth that digital lacks. In 2009, during TIP’s early development of new instant film, spokesperson Marlene Kelnreiter told The Guardian people still loved the technical quality film provided.

“People still long for the magic of Polaroid, the fact that you have a kind of darkroom in your hand. If you take a photograph of a small everyday thing like, say, a cup of tea on a Polaroid camera, the end result will be beautiful and poetic. That is down to the character of the film and the camera. Digital has not quite found a way to capture or recreate that quality,” she said.

Fast-forward six years, and The Impossible Project, based in Enschede, Netherlands, remains the only supplier of fresh integral film for Polaroid cameras. The emulsion, made from scratch (as the toxic chemicals used in Polaroid’s original film could no longer be sourced) and risky to shoot in its first releases, has now stabilised.

Gone are the blue tints, light leaks and sensitivity to humidity, which means TIP has more time to focus on aesthetics. For once, modern-day Polaroid shooters are getting more than their predecessors did: coloured and round frames, themed colour emulsions, and a new generation of film photographers finding new and interesting ways to produce images.

“It would be quite sad if one day there was only digital around and no experimentation on different mediums, different formats,” Wong says.

“Having film and different methods of processing like image transfer, make it really interesting and often you get more creative.

“You also need to think of each shot more, it’s not just ‘snap and Photoshop’!”

After running FilmNeverDie for four years, Wong decided instant film in Melbourne needed a bigger place to be seen.

“I realised a lot of people shoot a lot of good photos and often just hang them in their room, on their wall, or just keep them in an album,” Wong says.

“Like, why don’t I just unlock that space, just give people the creativity to exhibit and do an exhibition together?”

In June last year, FilmNeverDie held its first exhibition, Polaroid Resurrection. Original Polaroid shots were featured next to framed enlargements, showcasing each photographer’s use of the medium.

The exhibition, held at Photonet Gallery in Fairfield, was so popular its run was extended. Polaroid Resurrection was exhibited again in Kuantan, Malaysia this year, at an art café co-owned by Wong’s sister.

“A lot of people were quite surprised that Polaroid is still around. Even in Australia, people think it’s just a small photo, but if you really dissect it to understand the film and the latitude and dynamic behind it, (the camera sensor) is about 100 to 200 times the size of an iPhone 5 sensor," Wong says.

"It actually captures a lot of detail. So when we blew it up to A2 size, a lot of people were very surprised that it still retained so much detail in the photo.”

Since the interview, Wong has moved operations to a FilmNeverDie Café in Melbourne’s CBD, on the second floor of a three-storey building on Bourke St. The space is shared with a photography gallery and a commercial studio, where Wong opened Polaroid Resurrection for the third time as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

“My wife keeps telling me, ‘Don’t call it a café, because we’re not selling coffee’,’’ Wong joked.

A team of volunteer baristas and friends of Wong serve free coffee (you read that correctly). There is a large table in the foyer for photographers to meet, collaborate and help each other, which Wong believes is integral to the film industry surviving in a digital-dominated world.

With each click of a Polaroid shutter costing, on average, $4, every picture counts.

“With social media being so prevalent, the only way to survive is to focus on the community and build people up to be able to run photowalks and how-tos. Not just one person, but having many people around you passionate about film and Polaroid, and empower them to spread the love even further,” Wong says

The new space has a minimal, clean look in contrast to the rustic décor of Parkville. Wong carefully pours a latte, having just taken a barista course several weeks before.

Large-format cameras and packets of instant film are spread across the table as a group of photographers discuss lenses and film latitude. There is talk of putting up a new Polaroid wall, like the one at the old store.

At the café, people are not just buying film, but loading it in their cameras and taking pictures of each other. It is an old medium that fell out of favour from mainstream photography, but is now getting its bearings as a niche art form for amateurs and professionals alike.

Wong is adamant that it will continue to survive for a long time, with continued support.

“You can still shoot film, it’s just a matter of knowing where to go.”