Before Instagram

Before Instagram became the  latest way to share photos, there were Polaroids, which were only shared with friends and family, so you can probably imagine how excited I was to discover the ones of Winona Ryder I was alerted to recently. They were all taken during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The first one I found was a test shot for W magazine, which was taken by Sofia Coppola in early 2002! As many film buffs and Winona fans will know, Sofia took over Winona's role of Al Pacino's daughter in The Godfather Part III when Winona  feel ill on the first day of shooting in Rome, collapsed in her hotel room, and had to drop out of the movie.

Although Polaroids now seem a thing of the past,  in their day they were the best way to shoot an instant photo that were ready within minutes. The joy of them was that you didn't have to take your negatives to the chemist for developing or run the risk of having your pictures seen by everyone at your local pharmacy, or have them laugh or gawk at the shots you were embarrassed about. In those days, before digital cameras liberated our need to share instant pictures, taking a picture was much more of a private affair. 

Like the Polaroids that Robert Rich took, they were seen only on the walls of his office. Robert was the manager of the Marc Jacobs store on Mercer Street in 
New York, and Sofia Coppola spent what felt like a good part of the late ’90s and early 2000s there in his basement office. On the W magazine Tumblr page Sofia recounts of how it was back then. "Instead of stepping into the luxurious dressing rooms, actresses, models, and special clients tried on clothes and posed in Robert’s crowded space behind the stockroom, which was covered in Polaroids and pages torn from magazines. Winona Ryder and Lil’ Kim donned court and premier outfits, Kate Moss undressed, Selma Blair pouted. Robert gave Sofia a framed photo of Bill Murray when she was trying to meet the actor for a movie she wanted to make. We spent hours hanging out, dressing up, and posing for him, when there was nowhere else we’d have rather been, and we didn’t have as much to do." After years had passed, Robert let Sofia  go through a box of his photos 
and remember that moment in time. She recently posted a number of those Polaroids online for all to see.

You can see the photos here