Exhibit shows the many ways that artists and photographers used the Polaroid camera. Installation includes works by Ansel Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Andy Warhol.
It was the perfect product for the convenience-minded American public. TV dinners, drive-ins and Automats were popping up everywhere, and the idea of taking a picture and being able to see it immediately fit right in with instant coffee, and automatic dishwashers. But a new exhibit of photography at the University of New Hampshire shows that the Polaroid camera was more than just the "fast food" of the photography world. Eleanor Hight is a professor of Art & Art History at UNH. She says Polaroid founder Edwin Land was inspired to create the camera by his daughter:
CUT PNO#4 4:48 ? EH: ?He came up with this idea, because he was traveling with his young daughter in 1944 and they were in Santa Fe, N.M., and he took a photograph of her and she said, ?where?s the photograph??, because she wanted to see it right away, and, according to him, he came up with this idea within an hour, figuring out the camera, the film, the chemistry everything.?
Perhaps what Land didn?t consider were the many ways that artists would use the new technology. The exhibit starts with a couple of Polaroids of Yosemite from the ?50s by Ansel Adams. What?s unusual about the Adams photos is their dimensions: They?re only 3 by 4 inches:
CUT: pno4 10:08? It?s Adams. It definitely is Adams. We can recognize him right away. The grandeur of the landscape, the kind of drama ? even if we have to get up closer than we thought we did.?
The show continues chronologically with a couple of black and white portraits and still lifes from the ?60s, including one of Salvador Dali against a backdrop of the moon. The shots from the 70s, include color images and some made by Polaroid?s 235-pound 20 by 24 inch camera, which Andy Warhol used for a self-portrait:
0914: Here we have this photograph that?s very striking because it?s so large?create 5 times bigger than life-size?10:27 LP Most often you see Andy Warhol wearing glasses, he was known as being a recluse, and here you get an intimate portrait of a man who wouldn?t let himself be known. Right, and with one eye?s in shadow, and the other?s looking right at you?..
The Polaroid intrigued artists from other media, and the technology lent itself well to experimentation. Hight points to a glossy still life of jumbled glassware in deep rich jewel-tones of cranberry and indigo. Emerging from the display is artist Lucas Samaras?s face. It?s a type of shot that Samaras calls a ?Photo Transformation? :
?..He would take the film and heat it up before he used it and then as soon as he pulled it out of the camera, he would start to manipulate it and work with the somewhat soft materials to create these photo transformations and this is how he was able to create some of these surreal effects. LP?. can you describe this one?
EG Well, there are very unusual, bright colors, this is a way to make the colors much more intense, but sometimes they have a look as though they?re melted the colors are running into each other, forms are beginning to dissolve and disintegrate, some of the views of his face are really quite horrible and frightening, the views ?here we have one another of his self portraits, where he?s shown nude, leaning over with his back toward us with these bright strange red colors on his leg, it?s almost as if his skin is glowing ??.
There?s also an exquisite eggplant, brown and violet-colored nude by Robert Mapplethorpe, and a couple of pastel-toned images that Hight says shows Mapplethorpe?s gift for shading:
16:08 (PNO#5)
EH: and even these much smaller photographs of Patti Smith ? very pale colors ? they almost look like they?re black & white, but it?s pale cream and green and her face is skin tone is bleached out and looks very light, but very subtle colors, he really was a terrific colorist, I think?L: I usually think of Patti Smith as rough and tough and angular and hard, but he?s made her look soft. EH: Made her look soft and she?s even there with a velvet pillow (giggle)
25:03 OH! My gosh ? I don?t know what to make of this ? it looks like a self-portrait, but it looks like a portrait in torture. It really does. This is a??a large 20x24 inch ? it looks like it?s in black and white, but then parts are in color ? there?s a kind of gauze over his eyes ? it?s a kind of S&M self-portrait with his mouth held open by these metal clamps. It?s very frightening and striking, and part of the reason why it?s so frightening is that it?s larger than life-size?very detailed kind of film, you can see the pores on his face, so you think it?s something real?.he?s painted his face silver or white 26:32 ? this is a work of art, it?s meant to express and say something rather than just imitate or mimic something in the world. They want you to know, this photography is creative art rather than just this mindless machine making an image?..adjacent to an image of a wild man that?s placed in a cage?
The exhibit also offers a taste of the digital age, with a pair of computer-generated, contorted faces:
EG: They look basically Black & White but they have a kind of blue tone to them ? they are color photographs where the head just seems to be emerging from this black background ? one of them there is no hair - it?s a shaven head - it almost looks like the head of a fetus ? the other one has eyes that are standing out, almost like a silent movie from the 1920s, that?s the expression of fear. But the heads are just glowing from this dark background ? very striking images.
Most people use Polaroid cameras to take snapshots, so it?s associated with family and friends. For that reason, Hight says, she thinks a lot of people don?t realize how artists embraced it as a new technology, and, because it hadn?t been used before, they tried everything with it:
7:46 Start out by saying to somebody, ?what do you think photography is?? and it?s amazing what percentage of the world thinks it?s the kind of photographs they see in magazines or in newspapers, and think it?s truthful and that it really objectively mimics the world around you and to really see that it could be used in such a wide range of artistic ways ? I don?t think anybody can come into this exhibition and walk around and think, ?Oh, you know, that was dull and boring and it was just the same thing, you know, again and again. Every corner you turn has a different kind of art and a different kind of use
Eleanor Hight is an associate professor of art and art history at UNH. INNOVATION & IMAGINATION: 50 YEARS OF POLAROID PHOTOGRAPHY is at UNH?s Art Gallery through April 18th.
For New Hampshire Public Radio, I?m Lisa Peakes in Durham.
