From eau
The last Polaroid Week entry is a two-parter. The first piece is from eau, a New Orleans Gypsy who’s been enrapturing us on Fotolog for years now. After many months as a wandering refugee from the hurricanes, eau—Elizabeth Underwood—is back in NoLa, trying to heal, and helping others do the same through her brand-new community project, ArtinAction. She’s one of a kind.
I was happy to save Elizabeth’s pictures and words about her Polaroids for last; they seem to encapsulate a lot of what we’ve been getting at in the past several days.
After her photos comes the final group of your images, which bring Polaroid Week to a close. It’s been an amazing adventure. A million thanks to everybody who had fun participating in and reading the posts of Polaroid Week. I hope we can do another special focus soon. Holgas, anyone? —along
My Polaroid camera gives me photographs that look how the world looks to me if I see from my heart—juicy, somewhat feral, even mystical. This might explain why when I evacuated for Hurricane Katrina I left all my medium & large-format cameras, but made sure I had my Polaroid. It goes with me on overnight trips (toothbrush, cell phone charger, Polaroid), and when I am leaving for a place I may never return from. I can explain it but why bother? All that matters is that quick glossy shot that seems to emerge from a liminal space and says everything I would ever want to say. —Elizabeth
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Most Polaroids reproduce in print very well, and a handful of well-edited books published or reissued in the past two years shows off the extraordinary range of subject matter, imagination, and pathos that professional and amateur photographers have captured in six decades of shooting Polaroids. All of these volumes are nicely proportioned to show off the majority of prints at actual size.
 
Right: Lucas Samaras, “Photo Transformation,” December 28, 1973.
The Polaroid Book (published by Taschen)—We can’t know for sure, but this anthology of nearly 300 pictures, selected from the 23,000 images in the Polaroid Collections, is likely a balanced representation of the medium’s numerous subjects and styles, ranging from very arty to fashionista to journalistic to experimental. (Oh, and lots of nudes.) All the well-known Polaroidists are included, of course, like David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Duane Michals, and Rosamond Wolff Purcell. A surprising omission is Walker Evans, who experimented beautifully with SX-70s in his last years. Other surprises are reasons to consider picking this book up: an extreme close-up of a boy with the darkest brown eyes ever, by the master abstractionist Aaron Siskind; Bill Burke’s 1979 picture of two mustachioed gents smoking in the doorway of a San Francisco barber shop called El Artista; and Sachiko Kuru’s wild (fashion?) shot of a woman dressed in a crimson tunic and cap, half-hidden behind a mound of earth, with the hindquarters of a jet-black dog in the foreground. Whatever it’s selling, I’ll take it.
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In the Floggers Talk Polaroid series, cryingboy, aka Dan Estabrook (he and palmea interviewed each other a while back), lets us in on why he’s a photographer with a fetish for only one type of film.
I haven’t really shot film in years… it’s all been paper negatives for Art and digital snapshots for Fun. But my one concession is Polaroid type 55 or 665, the one with the positive & negative combined. I used to just shoot them for tests, but now I find I shoot them when I’m making other things and also just for themselves. It’s becoming a secret stash now, a whole other body of work saved over the years. You know, for my big “Cryingboy: the Polaroids” show when I’m 65! —Dan
I shot this 13 years ago. Looks like 113 now…
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From flo_pie
The end of Polaroid Week is near—so post those last-minute shots! We’ll have one more gallery tomorrow. Here’s today’s catch—Thank God It’s Friday.
From brainware3000
From kandykorn
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“Clarence.” Photograph © Jennifer Trausch.
We’re very lucky with the guest bloggers this week. Here Raul Gutierrez—Mexican Pictures, Heading East—interviews his friend Jennifer Trausch, who makes gorgeous and compelling photographs with large-format cameras, including the 20×24 Polaroid. Read on—Raul and Jennifer explain it all for you. Enjoy. —along
Jennifer Trausch is a New York-based photographer whose day job is operating the legendary 20×24 Polaroid camera at the Polaroid Studio in lower Manhattan. The camera is 5-feet (150 cm) high and weighs 235 pounds (106 kg). It produces huge 20×24 inch (50×60 cm) images that are known for their unmatched clarity and detail. The camera’s storied history includes numerable sessions with artists from Andy Warhol to Chuck Close to William Wegman.
Trausch had rarely used the 20×24 for her own independent projects until recently, when she went out on the road with her assistant, Kim Venable, taking photographs of people around America. While the project is ongoing Jennifer let us peek at some of the images and discussed how they were partially dictated by her desire to push the camera in new directions. —Raul Gutierrez
RG: How did you get involved with the 20×24 Polaroid camera?
JT: As a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, I took part in a mobility program in New York that introduced me to the 20×24 Polaroid camera. I then interned for a full semester with the camera, but never imagined I would have a future with it. I went on to finish school in Ohio and began assisting photographers and eventually made my way back to NY. Due to my experience with the 20×24 studio, I began working with the artist Gregory Colbert (Ashes and Snow exhibition) as a large-format printer. When there was an opening at the 20×24 Polaroid Studio I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. There are only five of these cameras in the world and it seemed an honor to have the chance to run one. I have now been with the camera for four and a half years.
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Another Fotologger who’s been shooting Polaroids for ages is dirtdirt. In fact, Mr. Dirt, aka Chris Stangland, has taken one Polaroid a day for the past five years. Some of his Polaroid handiwork is on Fotolog, but all of it is at Formerly 669: A Polaroid a Day, Every Day.
From Chris’s faq:
Q: So, you take a bunch of pictures each day and post the best one, right?
A: Wrong wrong wrong. What you see is what I took, exactly. A handful of times I have had catastrophic camera malfunctions resulting in all black or all white prints and had to re-shoot. There are PLENTY of pictures in here that I think really suck, and would love to’ve re-shot, but that is not how it works. Also, for what it is worth there is absolutely NO post-production or photoshopping on these.
Well, he’s wrong too, about one thing: it’s not plenty—maybe a handful. In five years. Now that’s consistency. And obsession I guess. Obsession is good.
Chris uses several different kinds of cameras, including this awesome looking and sounding behemoth:
the Polaroid Graph-Check, a sequential 4×5 camera. Chris again:
It is built like a tank (seriously. the damn thing is made out of milled steel), and was marketed as an aid to golfers and baseball players. You know, to check their swings. If you should happen to stumble across one I’d highly recommend picking it up. The film is expensive, and fussy, and sloppy and the camera itself is not all that easy to use, but they are still really really neat.
So here’s a dirtdirt everyday compendium, with a few graphchecks thrown in—that’s Chris demonstrating his impeccable pitching form, and his wife Erin, aka azucena, modeling her impeccable hula-hooping form. Congratulations are in order, as today they become parents for the first time!
 
 
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From suzannasugar
Polaroids are fun and participatory—a social happening. And the lenses and film format of most Polaroid cameras are just right for portrait making. So it’s no accident that most prints you see tend to be people pictures. Here are a bunch of the best ones we’ve come across on Fotolog—some brand new and some posted as far back as summer 2003.
From andj
From ndouvid
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From palmea. Portrait of the artist as a young… witch.
We asked a few Fotologgers to reminisce about their experiences shooting Polaroids. Here is the first installment, from Pamela Bannos, aka palmea. —along
Polaroid memories are bittersweet for me since they stopped supporting artists, went bankrupt, and then started discontinuing their best products.
[Ed. note: after bankruptcy in 2001, the company was sold and restarted, again as the Polaroid Corporation. link, Wiki.]
I’ve always thought that if they had gotten their team of researchers to think about digital media early on, they’d still be a profitable company that could afford to keep their early film products available. While the electronic companies started developing digital visual media Polaroid began putting photographs on stickers—sheesh.
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From placeinsun
Have you posted your new Polaroids yet? It’s Polaroid Week, silly! All these just went up within the last 24 hours. Post yours to your Fotolog, and send us the link—we’ll feature them here on the F’log!
(Note: Thanks to all the folks who have sent in their Polaroid links—yours will be coming up soon!)
(Note2: click on any photo to get to that person’s Fotolog page!)
From cryingboy
From jkh_22
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From fotoloco
click-bzzzz-whrrrrr
Hold onto your Spectras and One-Steps, SX-70s and Joycams: Polaroid Week has arrived! Over the next several days, join us in celebrating the pleasures of the original “instant photography”—that maddening and magical genre that captured the imagination of several generations, and which even today, in the wake of the digital imaging tidal wave, still commands an undeniable magnetic attraction.
    
Tune in here daily at the F’log for revealing interviews of some well-known Polaroid devotees, reminiscences and anecdotes of ‘roid love by several Fotologgers, and discussion of and links to great Polaroid sites and resources on the Web.
And of course, lots and lots of Polaroids. We’ve scoured our pages for some of the most interesting, moving, funny, and bizarre images you’ve scanned and posted to Fotolog. But we’ve probably seen just a tiny percentage of what’s out there. If you have some favorite Polaroids, either your own or a fellow Flogger’s, send the links—not the files themselves!—to us at dailyflog@fotolog.com, or paste them in the comments here (note: more than 3 links get flagged as spam).
And join in the fun—go out and shoot some new Polaroids this week!
To kick it off, here’s just a handful of my favorite Polaroids on Fotolog. Many more where they came from.
Coming later today: The Fotolog Interview with the one and only polaroid_billy.
From cookieb
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