What is Passport Polaroid?

Fifteen years ago, I was back home in Singapore for a short visit, carrying a few rolls of film that needed developing. I went straight to the neighborhood photo lab — the same one my family had trusted since before I was born. It was where we went for everything: batteries, film, my kindergarten graduation photos, passport shots with my hair sticking out in every direction. It was a place stitched into the fabric of our family life.

The owner, whom we affectionally call Uncle Koh, had watched my photography journey from the very beginning. He never rushed me; we’d stand around for hours talking about old cameras, strange techniques, and the kind of magic only film can make. He was the first person who made me believe that the look you want should be created in-camera, not fixed later. “There’s always magic when you work with film,” he’d say. I’d always counter that the imperfections were the real magic — the scratches, the light leaks, the unpredictability. We’d go back and forth about that. He refused to shoot clients on expired film or gear that wasn’t perfectly serviced. I was the complete opposite.

On that trip, he pulled me into the back of the lab and opened a dusty box filled with Polaroid cameras and stacks of Fuji FP‑100C. One of the cameras had four lenses — a bulky passport Polaroid rig that took four tiny portraits on a single sheet of peel‑apart film. No one needed that service anymore; digital convenience had swallowed it whole. And so, in 2011, when almost everyone was abandoning analog, he handed me the entire box. It felt like he was passing down a small inheritance — a piece of a world that was quietly disappearing.

I carried those cameras everywhere: on jobs, on set, on trips. People started calling me Mr. Passport Polaroid. Then in 2016, Fujifilm discontinued peel‑apart film — the last company still making it. I bought one case and guarded it like treasure.

Over the years — through years of change, through a pandemic that nearly stopped the world — I’ve used that film to photograph people I love, strangers I met once, moments that deserved to be held. I’ve gifted packs, sold packs to make rent, saved packs for the right person or the right day.

And now, after all this time, I’m standing here with only what remains — the very last of that case.

~ Alvin

Passport Polaroid - A project by Alvin Kean Wong, only on Sept 19 and Oct 2.

Peel‑apart film feels like a vanished ritual—an alchemy of touch and time, where images bloom softly as you separate memory from paper. Experience a 45‑minute session with Alvin and leave with a relic of a fading craft—your story captured in a single/quad peel‑apart frame.

One shot, no retakes.