The RENOWNED Polaroid
We all know it, we all love it. It is so simple yet carries the image of youth, freedom and vulnerability: The Polaroid. It is not just a picture you take for “the gram” , it is a calculated shot of a moment in time. I guess what makes it so intriguing is the whole process behind it: you have a camera, you strike a pose, you click the button, the polaroid prints itself and everyone anxiously awaits the reveal of said picture while it develops. It is an extravagant way of capturing memories and adding flair, depth and glamour to any photograph– the complete opposite of what happens to our normal iPhone pictures, which tend to get lost in an endless hole of pictures in our camera rolls.
The history of the polaroid began about a century ago, when Harvard freshman Edwin H. Land decided to drop out of university in order to pursue his own research. In 1926, he patented first synthetic polarizer. This led him to start his own journey of developing an instant camera that was easy to use and could produce images directly. The following 70 years were marked by the continuous improvement of his invention– the Polaroid. In the 1990s, the prototypes of the Polaroid camera displayed the efforts of the designers to create more compact and less fragile models, which were the predecessor of the current model we all know and love today. In 2009, the brand announced the end of the production of all their instant cameras and films, which represented the end of an era in photographic history.
Autoportrait (1973) by Andy Warhol
Throughout history, the Polaroid has been an iconic source of media used by many renowned creators. In the late 1960s, the company recruited some of the world’s most famous artists such as David Hockney and Andy Warhol, to test its products. They later returned the finished prints to the Polaroid Collections Committee. The same project was implemented in Europe, where these works became the basis for the International Polaroid Collection during the 70s and the 80s. This striking collection was later displayed as The Polaroid Project in 2018 at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany.
Personally, my favourite Polaroid exhibition is from Lucas Michael– an Argentinian performer, painter, sculptor, and photographer. His exhibition at the Danziger Gallery was a reconceptualisation of Andy Warhol’s work from the 60s, featuring Hollywood icons. Michael combined three different bodies of work. The first one was “Golden Globes” (2013), which features modern muses such as Jennifer Lawrence shot for New York Magazine against a white background backstage at the famous awards ceremony. These images portray the Warholian obsession with fame and glamour that Michael attempts to reinvent. The second body of work “Ladies and Gentlemen” (2005 – 2013), was Michael’s appropriation of Warhol’s seminal body of work of the same name. Using the layout of Warhol’s book as inspiration, he recreated the images shot by shot with a cast of mostly female contemporary artists contrasting Warhol’s transvestites. And last but certainly not least we have “Six Appearing Acts” (2004)– a twelve-and-a-half-minute video exploring the symbolic power of the Polaroid and photography’s relationship to voyeurism. This work (click here to watch) consisted of six Polaroid images placed before the viewer as they develop. Although Michaels work is often underrated, he continued using Polaroids as a media.
Golden Globes (2013) by Lucas Michael
Ladies and Gentlemen (2005-2013) by Lucas Michael
