Impossible started with a small team of the very best 10 former Polaroid employees who shared our passion as well as the belief in our Impossible dream. Every single one of them has a long time of expertise in the field of instant film production - more than 500 years accumulated experience and knowledge. Without their work and support the Impossible Project would not have had the slightest chance to make the Impossible possible. The Impossible Project currently employs 25 people in the factory in Enschede.

Meet the Founders:

Dr. Florian Kaps

Founder & Chief Creative Officer

2001 Florian first dived into the magic of analog photography as a leading manager of the Lomographic Society, developing their worldwide online community and shop platform. Being attracted by the exercise of running into the opposite direction since his childhood, he reacted to the digital revolution by founding a strictly analog company, establishing what is today's biggest network of everything correlated to INSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY. What started based on nothing more than pure unreasonable analog love soon turned out to be a high potential and essentially important project: The Impossible Project, that finally led to the re-invention of a complete new instant film system, making an analog dream come true

André Bosman

Founder

André joined Polaroid in November 1980 as a product and process engineer, rose to manager engineering and became member of the management team. Among his achievements at Polaroid are the creation of many specialty films like: Pre-exposure film, Logo film, Printed mask and dark slide, Lottery film, TZ blend film, TZ artistic and Spectra Image Soft tone. In June 2008 André met Florian at the closing event of the Polaroid factory and after 2 beers and 2 hours of intense discussions he decided to take action against the death of Instant Photography. Within just one year André and his Impossible team developed a complete new Instant film system, writing a new chapter in the history of photography

Christian Lutz

Founder, CEO Impossible Camera

Christian studied industrial engineering in Vienna and completed the OPM-Program at Harvard Business School. He has over 15 years experience as entrepreneur and as executive manager in the Internet, media and communication industries. After studying he started 1992 his first software-company. Since then he founded several start-ups and grew them successfully to larger companies. Many times he raised funds from VCs and concluded several exits, including to NASDAQ-listed companies. In 2005 he fell in love with Polaroid, when he helped Florian to boot his Polanoid-Business. His passion on working with investors, building up teams, managing the business and driving innovation are the reasons why he is excited to be part of this venture.

The Impossible
P R O D U C T I O N

Starting from Scratch

Due to the fact that the original Polaroid color dyes are not available any more and that there is no chance to reproduce them, the Impossible Project had to start from the very scratch. The Impossible team had one year to completely reinvent a new photographic instant system. Impossible? Almost. But after thousands of experiments and after a million of small steps and a lot of blood, sweat and tears (not to forget the support of many excellent partners) we managed to develop a new Impossible film system.

Impossible Silver Shade Film

In April 2010 Impossible released the first line of a new, monochrome film. Based on Impossible's new Silver Shade system, this unique new monochrome system contains 29 new layers as well as 13 new chemicals and forms the basis of all our future products. By now, the following Silver Shade film materials are available: PX 100 Silver Shade for Polaroid SX 70 cameras, PX 600 Silver Shade for Polaroid 600 cameras and PZ 600 Silver Shade for the wide format in Polaroid Image/Spectra 1200 cameras.

Impossible Color Shade Film

In July 2010 Impossible released the First Flush Edition of a first, brand new color film - quite a miracle considering that not even the most optimistic experts believed in the re-invention of the highly complex instant color system. PX 70 Color Shade FF is the first meteoric product of Impossible's new and rapidly expanding Color Shade universe, compatible with Polaroid SX 70 as well as 600 camera models.

The Impossible
F A C T O R Y

The Impossible factory is located in Building Noord (North) of the former Polaroid plant in Enschede. Since its early days this impressive black and white striped building has been the heart of the film production plant, housing the giant production machines. Impossible also moved all other machinery required to start re-production of instant film to Building Noord. With this new and modern setup, production was downscaled from 3-4 buildings in Polaroid times to just one building

Take a Tour:

Upon entering the building you can immediately inhale the very special mixture of oil, chemicals, age and passion. You will find old furniture, an abandoned doctor's office, on the wall diplomas from the last decades mixed with pictures of the new setup.

On the ground level the huge warehouse gives room to hundreds of shelves, filled with leftover packaging, pallets and chemicals from past years as well as new film packs and materials.

The ground level is also home of Jos Ridderhof, the godfather of camera repair. For many years he serviced, repaired and caressed thousands of SX 70 cameras. Since the start of the Impossible Project he restored as many cameras as possible. His rooms are packed with cameras of all kinds and designs.

Climbing up the
1st Floor

Walking up the stairs you will be impressed by a gigantic lamp at the center of the stairways, almost looking like the backbone of the building. On the 1st floor you will find the cafeteria, home of the famous dutch coffee, the headquarter offices as well as the packaging line. Next to the old style lockers, some of them still filled with original Polaroid jeans, is the huge archive with a collection of over 30.000 carefully preserved spare parts.

On the second floor you will enter the epicenter of the Impossible universe. The production area, consisting of two essential facilities:

1. The Chemical Lab
Here the Impossible chief chemist Martin Steinmeijer is performing magic, developing new recipes and formulas, creating thousand of the so-called lab-spreads and testing the new inventions.

2. The Production Hall
9 giant production machines, several pod filling machines, 1 big slitter, the reactors, 2 molding machines and many additional tools are located in this part of the 2nd floor. This area is the loudest part of the factory and the machines can be heard and felt throughout the entire building like heavy heartbeats. The heartbeat of analog instant photography.

The Impossible Factory is located at

Hoge Bothofstraat 45
7511 ZA Enschede
P.O. Box 242 7500 AE Enschede
Netherlands

The next airports are:
Schipol, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Münster

There are direct train connections from:
Berlin, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf and Dortmund

Contact

Customer Service

Europe:

EMAIL: service@the-impossible-project.com
TEL: +49 (30) 577 0150 10
FAX: +49 (30) 577 0150 19

USA:

EMAIL: usa@the-impossible-project.com
TEL: +1 (212) 219-3254

ASIA:

EMAIL: asia@the-impossible-project.com
TEL: +81(0)3 5459-5093

Impossible Project Spaces

Vienna:

EMAIL: vienna@the-impossible-project.com
TEL: +43 (1) 522 32 13

New York City:

EMAIL: nycspace@the-impossible-project.com
TEL: +1 (212) 219-3254

Tokyo:

EMAIL: tokyo@the-impossible-project.com
TEL: +81(0)3 5459-5093

Store Locator

For hands-on shopping
and personal consultation
please find an offline shop
with our Store Locator

Press

The Impossible
Coverage

Since its start The Impossible Project faced a huge interest from worldwide press. Stories about this venture have - amongst numerous others - been featured in The New York Times, The Independent, National Post, The British Journal of Photography, The Observer, Financial Times, Wired, Le Monde or Wallpaper. Every single one of them proves how vivid and fascinating the magic of Instant Photography still is.