There's a small show of Andy Warhol Polaroids of 1970s and '80s sports stars at Danziger Projects, partly viewable online. You can also read Kathy Ryan's admiring comments at the World's Greatest Photography Magazine. (Note that this appears in a fashion section, not an arts one.)
I'm not sure I agree with her about the intrinsic merit of the photographs; seems more like celebrity culture cutting both ways, with the photos themselves left over as talismans, artifacts. Is it really so deathlessly fresh to picture Jack Nicklaus nuzzling a golf club, Ali with his shirt off, Dorothy Hamill with her skates slung around her neck? Not convinced. Of course I haven't seen the actual...artifacts. The show is up until December 12th at Danziger Gallery, 534 West 24th Street, New York City.
The vagaries of taste
I was never grabbed very hard by Polaroids per se. Taste is a strange and mysterious thing—I love snapshots, have a protean appetite for looking at them, adore books of snapshot collections (in fact I have a veritable pile of snapshot books here that I've been meaning for some time to write up in a massive group review). Show me a large enough pile of snapshots and I will find you an inadvertent masterpiece, with all the charm and magic that only serendipity can create.
Above are two samples from a new group that Rodger Kingston recently uploaded to his SmugMug page of his Kingston collection. Of course we're not looking at "mere" snapshots there, but expertly chosen ones. Rodger is a rare connoisseur; his selections are, in effect, edited. Curated. I'm not saying "found" ephemera and snapshots are all I'd want to look at. Still, I have great natural affection for that stuff.
You'd think I'd love Polaroids. And I'm not saying I don't appreciate the high points—I think of Jamie Livingston's great archive, preserved by Hugh Crawford. You can't help but be moved by that. And yet, I've been meaning to write—trying to write—trying to find the right things to say—about The Impossible Project for some time now, and the words have a hard time coming. The only thing that come easily to mind are flip jokes about the appropriateness of the name. The project seems quixotic even to me, and I'm a very impractical guy.
Roped in
And the other day, when I bought PHOTO:BOX
at Stan Banos's recommendation, Amazon's "Frequently Bought Together" come-on roped me in, and I bought The Polaroid Book
along with it. It should be the kind of book I'd just love. Another copious, well-made, almost ridiculously high-value book (I mean, for less than eleven bucks, they're giving this away—it is a very generous and well-made book for that price—or twice or three times that price). It's part of Benedikt Taschen's 25th Anniversary Special Editions series (his is a story in itself). It has an incisive Introduction by the last Director of The Polaroid Collections, Barbara Hitchcock, and the selection of pictures is an embarrassment of riches. To circle around to where this started, there is even a Polaroid of Andy Warhol wielding his Big Shot. And yet, I've paged through The Polaroid Book three times now, and can't sort out how to feel about it. I like it. I just don't love it.
There's something so self-conscious about Polaroids....
It doesn't seem enough to say that anyone who loves Polaroids should own it. I know there are people who really love Polaroids, who are genuinely excited about, and fervently hopeful for, The Impossible Project. Here's where I need a guest reviewer, someone with deep, real enthusiasm for that particular medium. Maybe I should ask Hugh....
Mike
Featured Comment by charlie: "I have owned The Polaroid Book in its last release for I think four years. Since then, it has become my go-to book when I need a good dose of pure photography. Were I forced to choose just three photo books to have for eternity , this one would be in that list. I also prefer the cover as it mimics the old Polaroid logo and packaging."
Mike replies: Now you're making me feel bad...what's wrong with me, anyway?
Featured Comment by Sean Murphy: "I'm trying to decide, was it instant photography or Polaroids that I loved. I love slides and instant photographs, because they are the actual picture. Made right in your camera that you can view directly without intervening tools and tech. But the slide still had to be developed somewhere else in space and time. With instant, the alchemy of the darkroom tray happened in broad daylight as you watched, right in your hand! Its getting hard to appreciate in our digital-camera-wifi-upload-to-the-web times, the satisfaction of making a picture on the spot that you could give to a friend or family member on the spot."Shooting with folding Polaroids using 'wink lights' and 3000 speed B&W that you had to rub that acrid fixer on, the sleek metal and leather of the SX-70 and pack film that always came with fresh batteries, sometimes morphing the image with a stylus for goofy effects, waving the print by the white tab at the bottom, as if that would make it develop faster, all the variations that came after down to the cameras for kids that shot little Polaroid stickers.... I guess I do love Polaroids, they were just plain fun!"
Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "Well Mike since you handed me that can of worms and that fine looking can-opener...
"As a fan and for many years a user of Polaroid, a big fan of Andy Warhol and his work, and sort of an obsessive about on-axis and penumbral lighting, I thought I'd like the Warhol show at the Danziger Gallery more, but it didn't do that much for me. The best thing about it was that it was that it is right across the street from the Bruce Davidson show at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, 505 West 24th Street. that show is quite wonderful. It's an interesting show to view with the Robert Frank show up at the Met.
"Odd coincidence number one: today's photo on my wife's blog otbkb.com was taken walking out of that gallery last Friday.
"Maybe it's the white seamless backgrounds or something, but those Big Shot photos look a little to much like they were made with a photocopier or a stat camera. Writing that down makes me think 'of course Andy wanted to become a photocopier, well duh...', but the qualities of the Big Shot pictures shot against white seamless that are so good when they are made into silkscreen paintings just don't do a whole lot for me in their original form.
"It's funny, I took a lot of photos of Warhol, and I took a lot of Polaroids of artists , but no Polaroids of Warhol.
"Odd coincidence number 2: a video of Andy Warhol and Truman Capote taken while I was photographing them showed up on youtube recently; I think it was maybe my first job after college.
Hugh photographing Warhol not with a Polaroid. Note Alfred Stieglitz moustache.
"As for Polaroids in general, for me a lot of what makes them interesting it that they straddle the boundary of being an image and an object. Unlike most modern photographic prints, a Polaroid is fixed in its final form in the context of its making. A Polaroid portrait has most often been held by its subject at the time of its creation. These are qualities that Polaroids share with Daguerreotypes and wetplate collodion processes like tintypes and ambrotypes, but I think that the quality of the Polaroid being an artifact possibly held by its subject is much stronger with the Polaroids.
"The other interesting thing about Polaroids is not so much that they are imperfect and idiosyncratic visual interpretations of the world (because all photographic processes are imperfect and idiosyncratic visual interpretations of the world) but that the success of the Polaroid practitioner depends on anticipating and committing to that translation before the moment of exposure.
"Conventional late 20th century photo processes all allow or even demand a considerable amount of post exposure manipulation and visualization, and digital photography demands even more, whereas Polaroid demands that all decisions about the image be made prior to exposure.
"I just happen to be in the midst of cataloging another Polaroid based project (it's Mnemonic, it's Mimetic, and it's Memetic!) that encompasses all of this.
"Odd coincidence number 3: Andrew Lampert, Czar of the Cosmic Baseball Association, figures mnemonically in the the Robert Frank show, the Jamie Livingston Project, and this other thing I'm working on."
Featured Comment by Bill Poole: "I love The Polaroid Book, and I have always loved Polaroids for many of the reasons already mentioned. They hold a fascination as one-of-a-kind objects, like Daguerreotypes and tintypes. And they do have a view-camera-like quality, since the image is recorded full-sized. And then there is that soft color, which Cosindas exploited so expertly—Portra-like before Portra came along. Ya gotta love it—I did, and my Polaroids from the '70s are among my favorite images (and not just because my friends all look so young in them)."
Mike: I agree about the quality of Polaroids you have identified, but what do you think causes that self-consciousness?
Is it the immediacy of the feedback? We would expect that with digital too, no? Perhaps it is indirectly related to the cost per shot (as in: "on x exposures per pack . . got to make this count . . .")? Or on a related note: is it the fact that these are like mini-view camera shots rather than the best images of a 36-exposure roll or a 500-image photoshoot? Or is it that we, as observed subjects, were not practiced with the instant-feedback that digital has now made commonplace? Or maybe there was simply less control over all of the factors that we ordinarily control when making an image: color balance, exposure etc. I'd be interested in your speculation on this.
Ben Marks
Posted by: Benjamin Marks | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 09:14 AM
I've seen the Polaroids at Danziger and they're really charming. But, like all photos, you really need to see them in person. Each sports celebrity is actually represented by three shots -- I wonder how many frames Warhol shot?
Posted by: Joe | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 09:16 AM
I love the look of most Polaroids & can immediately think of a few photographers who got great results using them. Sarah Moon's work with 665 is outstanding, as is Paolo Roversi's fashion work with 8x10 colour. Walker Evans did some amazing stuff with the SX-70 in the 1970s, it's extraordinary how that technology both reinvigorated and transformed his style. There is also a wonderful book of Andrei Tarkovsky's colour polaroids.
Posted by: Michael W | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 09:43 AM
On the other hand, it was exactly YOU who made me buy "André Kertész: The Polaroids". You credibly made an enthusiastic impression, and for good reason indeed. The book is absolutely stunning :)
Posted by: Andreas Manessinger | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 10:08 AM
The Warhol polaroids make me think of nothing so much as the word "cramped". There's nothing comfortable about them.
Posted by: Jayson Merryfield | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 11:07 AM
I've always thought that the most beautiful portraits of the 20th Century were Maria Cosindas' Polaroids.
Posted by: Bill Mitchell | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 12:17 PM
I saw the Warhol Polaroids over the weekend. As photographs, they're merely OK; not worth the gushing. (Kertesz, for my money, is the master of the cheap little Polaroid). Their principal interest derives, obviously, from the fame of the photographer coupled with the fame of the subjects.
But if one is interested in Warhol, the Polaroids are well worth a look. They are quintessentially Warhol -- fame, and the nature of fame in modern society, is his principal topic, no? And, of course, the use of machine-made objects in the realm of high art, as well as the blurring of the line between high art and popular culture.
If I recall, the prices were not astronomical -- less than $10K, even for the better ones? Certainly a lot less than the $42 million someone paid last week for the silkscreen of 200 one-dollar bills. So, if you collect Warhol, why not these Polaroids?
Anyway, for some of us of a particular age, the pictures are quite amusing simply as 1970s artifacts. Ah the memories flood back -- Tom Seaver, Dorothy Hamill, and even O.J. Simpson! (Do the kids even know who Seaver is, or that O.J. had a life before Brentwood?)
Posted by: Yuanchung Lee | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 12:52 PM
Mike, have you seen Kertesz's The Polaroids? Only 127 pages, but well worth having. It is one of my favourites.
From the blurb: " Taken in his apartment just north of New York's Washington Square, many of these photographs were shot either from his window or in the windowsill."
Posted by: tim-j | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 01:28 PM
Bill,
Yeah, how did she DO that, anyway? I've never seen anybody else's work look like hers.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 02:45 PM
My two younger brothers and myself used to do ghost pictures with a Polaroid camera by carefully holding the camera (fairly) still on a dining room chair and taking two exposures.
We soon learned to adjust the exposure and have the 'ghost' standing against the dark inside of the shed; Having only eight shots concentrates even the mind of small boys.
Posted by: Roger Bradbury | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 03:21 PM
Andy Warhol must have liked photography because when Movado commissioned him to make an art wristwatch, he used 5 photos of New York.
http://watchismo.blogspot.com/2006/10/famous-for-hour-and-half-andy-warhol.html
He also made a lot of oxidized brass or bronze plates that he had famous people urinate on before the oxidation but that's another story.
A lot of great photographers seem to have started as painters. That does not bode well for my photography since my painting and drawing ability is zilch!
Posted by: JonA | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 05:03 PM
Well, I like the ship, (but I am a Naval Architect). I'm not sure its in a dry dock though, looks more like a patent slip.
Posted by: Gavin | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 05:13 PM
I don't know what it says about my taste for polaroids, but I've looked at the Warhol exhibit online, and read your article. My conclusion: that picture of the boat kicks massive tush.
Posted by: Scott Baker | Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 09:20 PM
There's nothing wrong with you Mike; you have the balls to admit that you don't get something most people in your community see as cool....keep up the good work.
Posted by: Poagao | Friday, 20 November 2009 at 02:43 AM
So, how much does the particular photographic medium matter and how much is it really a question of the photographer and their style of picture making? The medium doesn't make the photograph, the photographer does.
For example, I was much impressed by an exhibition of early Robert Mapplethorpe Polaroids seen earlier this year at Modern Art Oxford, (currently at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle until January 31st - warning, contains some distinctly adult material). His composition and control of light are superb. However, I couldn't help yearning for larger prints of these excellent images. His use of Polaroid seemed fairly incidental to the capturing of his carefully planned pictures. I don't think these photographs would have differed in their impact much if he'd used, say, 35mm film rather than Polaroid.
Polaroid seems ideal for off the cuff, spontaneous photography, but lets not get too carried away. Surely its simply a matter of horses for courses?
Posted by: David G | Friday, 20 November 2009 at 04:38 AM
Mike -
Since you put up those two photos from my collection on your site yesterday afternoon, my new (3 day old) snapshot gallery has gotten 11,489 hits (as a comparison, the next most popular gallery on my website has gotten 870 hits since the first of November).
What this demonstrates to me is the incredible power of the internet in general and of TOP in particular. I bow to your mastery. If anyone doubts in which direction the future lies, these numbers surely point the way.
Posted by: Rodger Kingston | Friday, 20 November 2009 at 11:30 AM
Went to see this yesterday. Pretty neat, and the quality of the polaroids actually surprised me. They have a couple on exhibition that aren't on the site, and a couple on the site that aren't on exhibition. They're selling each tiny polaroid for $10k each, and most are already sold.
Posted by: Seinberg | Friday, 20 November 2009 at 01:11 PM
The question is, what's wrong with all of us?
Posted by: charlie | Friday, 20 November 2009 at 07:40 PM
I have the "Polaroid Book" and its nice, but most of what's in there are the type of 'art' photographs that were common in the '70s and '80s.
To get a real taste of the Polaroid aesthetic as practiced today go to Flickr and look at the Polaroid pool. I like to just hit slideshow and let the current images just flash across the screen. I think there you get much more of the snapshot feeling in the photos. Many of them are taken by younger photographers and while many are banal, there is always something extraordinary in there.
Mike D
Posted by: Mike Durling | Friday, 20 November 2009 at 08:59 PM
Mike, Bill,
I read that Cosindas produced her beautiful colors by using exposure times as long as 10 seconds and extending the developing time of the Polacolor film to as much as 90 seconds instead of the regular 60 seconds.
Posted by: Phil G | Sunday, 22 November 2009 at 08:28 AM
Hi Mike,
FYI, there is a nice project by Robert Frank, 'Seven Stories' that Steidl just released. As the title does not suggest, it's about Polaroid shots from the Great Swiss. Beautifully printed, hard to fully grasp, it is so intimate that it is deeply moving. Like flicking through a shoe box from an old uncle, full of snapshots.
N.
Posted by: Nick | Monday, 23 November 2009 at 12:00 PM