The Impossible Project signifies the rebirth of analog photography after the digital revolution. As is well known it was founded by photo enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who saved the last Polaroid instant-film plant in the Netherlands and who are currently working to develop a successor to the instant film for the SX-70 cameras and the popular Polaroid 600 color film for Polaroid 600 cameras.

What is also known is that Edwin H. Land, gave many artists access to his cameras and film as a way to demonstrate Polaroid’s artistic potential and to get feedback from artists. The collection eventually grew to include 16,000 images with most of the photographs being kept in the United States. After Polaroid went under in 2008, a Minnesota bankruptcy court ordered the company to sell a portion of the collection; an auction of some of the works at Sotheby’s in the summer of 2010 generated $12.4 million.

Another collection of more than 4,500 prints by 850 artists had been held in trust since 1990 at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. That trove, known as the International Collection, has now been acquired by the WestLicht photo gallery in Vienna, a 10-year-old institution that collects photographs and antique cameras, with the help of the Impossible Project.