Blog About Photography

For some­one who hasn’t taken a Polaroid in ages, I’m sur­pris­ing myself by how much I’m read­ing (and writ­ing) about their deci­sion to aban­don instant film. A cou­ple days ago, NPR had a story on All Things Con­sid­ered about the end of the Polaroid, inter­view­ing none other than the leg­endary Chuck Close, who reveals that every pic­ture he’s ever taken (prac­ti­cally) has been a Polaroid, and every paint­ing he’s ever made has been made from a Polaroid. Close sums the sit­u­a­tion up pretty well. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do,” he says.

For a sec­ond they talk to some idiot from Polaroid who says that the company’s goal is to focus on bring­ing the “magic of Polaroid” to dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, per­haps with some kind of super potra­ble photo printer, as if any­one would have that much of a use for one. I imme­di­ately think of all the ink I would fly through if I printed every dig­i­tal pic­ture I snapped with­out think­ing; it sounds to me that Polaroid has some­thing of a fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of what dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy is all about.

The great­est irony of all this though, hinted at but not really explored in the NPR story, is that the onset of dig­i­tal pushed Polaroid out of the realm of mass con­sump­tion and into the domain of the artist. Instead of cor­ner­ing a niche mar­ket with a sta­ble (albeit small) amount of demand, Polaroid would rather chase after the oppor­tu­nity they missed a decade by attempt­ing to apply an obso­lete busi­ness model to a whole new world– dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy isn’t just a change in tech­nol­ogy, it’s also a change in the way peo­ple think about pic­tures. Now, hav­ing thor­oughly missed the boat, Polaroid will sink its life raft as well.

So I just tried to go see <a href=http://humbleartsfoundation.org/31.html”>31 Under 31, and the line to get in was lit­er­ally around the block. It’s freez­ing, so I didnt have it in me to tough it out, but I have to see this tonight so now that I’m warm and made my other stop, I’m going to brave the ele­ments and try again. But Jesus. So Many people!

Update: I man­aged to get into the show at about 11:00 pm and it was great. A seri­ous scene, packed with peo­ple but I man­aged to find Amy and Alana’s work amid the chaos.

© Greg Wasserstrom

For a lot of us, Polaroids were like a gate­way drug that devel­oped into more seri­ous photography-​​abuse. Above are the first images I made that ignited my inter­est in pho­tog­ra­phy in March 2001, almost 7 years ago.

In light of Polaroid’s recent dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of instant film, I thought I’d com­pile a list of Polaroid col­lec­tions from some of history’s great­est pho­tog­ra­phers. There are far more of these instances and projects than I rea­son­ably include here. Also, I only really know the obvi­ous ones, any­way. Please expand the list with your links and descrip­tions in the comments.

WALKER EVANS: POLAROIDS

Evans pio­neer­ing work of the ‘30s and ‘40s made pho­tog­ra­phy a par­tic­u­larly Amer­i­can mode of social explo­ration for much of the 20^th cen­tury. There is nary a pho­tog­ra­pher to fol­low that could escape his influ­ence. Evans was one of the very first pho­tog­ra­phers to begin exper­i­ment­ing with the Polaroid in the early 1970s. The com­pany was so thrilled by this liv­ing legend’s inter­est in their prod­uct, they quickly offered him an unlim­ited sup­ply of SX-​​70 film. Today, a sim­i­lar offer would yield a stock that would last only through 2009.

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE: AUTOPORTRAIT

From the book jacket: “The black-​​and-​​white Polaroid pho­tographs that Map­plethrope pro­duced dur­ing the early 1970s con­sti­tute an in-​​depth self-​​portrait, intently and graph­i­cally explor­ing expres­sions, moods, pos­tures and actions that range from angelics and inno­cent to sin­is­ter and erotic. Com­prised of Mapplethorpe’s ear­li­est pho­tographs, Auto­por­trait presents the artist’s most reveal­ing attempts to wed the erotic and sex­ual with other the­o­ret­i­cal concerns.

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE: POLAROIDS

The rea­son I’m doing Map­plethorpe twice is to empha­size not only his influ­ence on con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­phy but also to make the point that Polaroids were an impor­tant part of his process and his use of the medium in and of itself was not with­out influ­ence. This col­lec­tion of black-​​and-​​white polaroids from the 1970s shows Map­plethrope mak­ing por­traits of his clos­est friends and lovers and his imme­di­ate sur­round­ings. His use of Polaroid add to the spon­ta­ni­aty, imme­di­acy and inta­macy of the work which has had, with­out ques­tion, unmea­sur­able impact on later pho­tog­ra­phers like Nan Goldin.

ANDRE KERTESZ: POLAROIDS

In 1979, among increas­ing atten­tion to an inter­na­tional appre­ci­a­tion for his work, Kertesz began to exper­i­ment with the SX-​​70. Many seem to agree that the explo­ration of this new medium had much to do with a search for a new way of work­ing after the death of his wife. Or, at least that’s what it says on the book jacket and in the Wikipedia.

WILLIAM WEGMAN

It’s fair to say I’m not Wegman’s biggest fan, nor would I con­sider him a “mas­ter pho­tog­ra­pher” com­pa­ra­ble to the three pre­vi­ous ones. But as a pro­lific pro­ducer of mas­sive, crys­tal clear Polaroid por­traits of his, dogs– gen­er­ally dressed adorably as peo­ple– it wouldn’t be right to leave him off the list. So there you have it. Wegman’s been using Polaroids to pho­to­graph his Weimaran­ers, first Man Ray and now Fay Ray, since the 1980s. He’s also the only pho­tog­ra­pher on this list to appear on Sesame Street.

ANDREY TARKOVSKY: INSTANT LIGHT

Tarkovsky isn’t exactly a mas­ter pho­tog­ra­pher; he is the Russ­ian direc­tor respon­si­ble for the film Solaris (the orig­nal mind you, not the one with George Clooney) who also snapped Polaroids in his spare time. I think the same is true for Stan­ley Kubrick too, though I have to say that at this point I’m not that inclined to inves­ti­gate. But the won­der­ful thing about Polaroid is that for a per­son with an eye, like, say, an inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed film­maker, can take rich, com­plex pic­tures with­out hav­ing to under­stand the the tech­ni­cal work­ing of a non-​​instant cam­era. Not that Tarkovsky was a begin­ner, but you get my point. I found this book in a used book­store long ago, and it’s great.

So there it is. I know there are many, many more and please share them in the comments.