Polaroid’s tumblr-core MoMA collab turns your photos into works of art

Polaroid’s new collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) is designed to make your retro photos look like colorful works of pop art—and it feels like a flashback to 2014.

The partnership includes two exclusive items: an $130 Polaroid camera and a separate $22 set of eight custom film frames. The camera itself is an analog instant camera—specifically, Polaroid’s Now Generation 3 model—rendered in a bright blue housing, complete with the “MoMA” wordmark in a lighter blue across the front. Included with the device are three neon, MoMA branded wrist straps to customize the look. 

Where the collaboration really shines is with its custom Polaroid film frames. The MoMA and Polaroid teams have designed 12 unique frames, each in high-octane color combinations like turquoise and bright red or lemon yellow and blue. Six of the frames feature the MoMA logo, while the other six come pre-captioned with quotes from artists including Carmen Herrera, Betye Saar, Meret Oppenheim, and Milton Glaser. You might receive a quote like, “I am interested in restless ideas,” by An-My Lê, or “If one truly loves nature, one finds beauty everywhere,” by Vincent Van Gogh.

It’s a cute, if corny, concept that feels like it would’ve gone instantly viral in Tumblr’s hey-day of quote posting and aesthetic collages. According to a press release, the collab is intended to “capture the ethos of those who dared to see the world differently and invite today’s creatives to do the same.” For anyone who’s interested in the camera but not the inspiring quotes, the device is also compatible with regular Polaroid i-Type film.

This new collection is one of several recent collaborations that Polaroid has produced based on design and art icons, including an Eames-inspired Now Generation 2 camera and another Now Generation 2 that’s fully decked out in imagery from Jean-Michel Baquiat’s artwork Boy and Dog in a Johnypump.

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