I’m posting photos from my collection of family photographs on Saturdays with a brief explanation of what I know about each picture.

Sometime in either the summer of 1971 or 1972, I found an old Polaroid camera lying around the house and, it still had a couple of film ‘sandwiches’ inside the cartridge. My recollection is that it was a Polaroid SX-70 model camera, not the type of camera my father usually used but clearly had experimented with for a very brief time.

My brother Bob and I proceeded out to our backyard where I snapped this photo of my younger brother (the shadow of my left arm and head can be seen in the lower right of the photo), not knowing at the time that I was producing evidence of a time when my brother had a full head of hair.

The tell tale remnants of chemical ‘gook’ used to instantly develop the photo can be can be seen across the top. And from the trees seen in the distance, it appears the photo was taken in the early spring as there do not appear to be leaves on the trees. It would have been a time of transition for us, from playing hockey all the time to occasionally mixing in some baseball.

Did you ever use Polaroid cameras or some other type of instant photo camera?

Robert Anthony (Bob) Hadden abt. 1971-1972 (Photo by Ian Hadden)