New York, NY—Florian “Doc” Kaps, the driving force behind The Impossible Project, announced his retirement from the Austrian-based analog photographic company he founded. C. C. O’Hanlon has been named his successor.
The Impossible Project rose to prominence in 2008, when it bought the last factory in the world manufacturing Polaroid film to serve those with a genuine love for analog instant photography and classic Polaroid cameras.
Headquartered in Austria, with creative hubs in Berlin and New York City, The Impossible Project has wholly owned operations in six countries. In August, it will launch its first two camera products: the Instant Lab and the Pinhole. The development of both were initiated and overseen by Doc Kaps, who has been traveling almost constantly to demonstrate the new products to the press, potential customers and fellow designers. Last week, Kaps was in Cupertino, California, to give a talk to Apple’s team on Impossible’s brand values and the products that have evolved from it.
“It has been an exhausting few impossible years,” he said. “In the last six months, I have flown all over the world inspiring investors and customers with the future—not the past!—of analog instant photography, which is embodied in our new products. I have also been offering my input and inspiration to a completely new senior management team—as well as a new creative team at our Berlin studio—so that they can continue to evolve the company and its products and keep analog instant photography relevant to younger generations.”
Kaps added, “I hope to continue to maintain a close relationship with the company I founded, and I can’t wait to see the response of customers, new and old, to the products which I have helped create for it. But the time has come for me to step back for a while, spend some much-needed time with my family and think about other challenges I might wish to take on in the future.”
As Impossible's new chief executive officer, C. C. O’Hanlon commented: “Doc is one of the photographic industry’s few genuinely colorful and charismatic figures. He has directly engaged and inspired hundreds of thousands of photographers to remain connected to analog film—not just instant film, but all formats. Without his Herculean efforts and enthusiasm, the joy of analog instant photography and the usefulness of millions of classic Polaroid cameras would have been lost forever.” the-impossible-project.com
