Instant photography, heavily dominated by the Polaroid format, presented artists with unique constraints. The chemical immediacy and physical limitations of the film forced photographers to adopt highly specific aesthetics, often resulting in heavy cropping, centered subjects, and high detail. Furthermore, the high cost meant many early Polaroid artists shot within the confines of their own tiny apartments.
Because the Polaroid process contains all the developing chemicals within the film packet,11. Specifically the Polaroid SX-70 format, which ejected a self-contained square with a protective Mylar coating. The complex paste of dyes and developers sat between the layers and took about an hour to fully harden. artists discovered they could physically alter the image before it fully set.
Emulsion Manipulation: A technique where the artist manually presses, scratches, or draws on the surface of an instant photograph while the chemicals are still developing.
Samaras emigrated to NY from Greece with aspirations to be a fine artist but lacked money for studio space or models. He photographed himself in his tiny apartment using a Polaroid SX-70. During the hour-long development process, he would manually manipulate the chemical emulsion by pressing on the photo’s surface with styluses and his fingers, melting his own facial features into monstrous, swirling shapes that reflected his psychological state.
[TODO: Image]: Lucas Samaras’ “Photo-Transformation” series (Nov 1973), showing distorted self-portraits and manipulated emulsion. Likely source: Polaroids and 35mm slides.
Other artists used the Polaroid’s small, uniform size as building blocks to deconstruct space and time over a larger canvas.
Photographic Cubism: A technique of taking multiple instant photos of a single location from slightly different angles and assembling them into a mosaic.
David Hockney, originally a painter, felt traditional photography was too static. By shooting dozens of Polaroids of a person moving slightly, or a swimming pool from different angles, and piecing them together, he echoed Cubist paintings—forcing the viewer’s eye to travel across fragmented time and space.
[TODO: Image]: David Hockney’s “Sun in the Pool, Los Angeles” (1982) and “Pear Blossom Highway”. Likely source: Polaroids and 35mm slides.
The instant gratification of Polaroids made them powerful tools for on-the-ground documentary interaction, as subjects could see the results immediately.
Collaborative Portraiture: Using the immediate physical output of instant film to break down barriers between the photographer and the subject, allowing the subject to participate in the image-making process.
Goldberg used Polaroids to bridge the gap of trust with his subjects. He would take a portrait, wait for it to develop, and hand it to the subject along with a sharpie. By asking them to write their thoughts directly on the white border of the photograph, he surrendered partial authorship of the image, giving marginalized people agency to frame their own narratives.
[TODO: Image]: Placeholder for Jim Goldberg’s annotated Polaroid portraits. Mentioned in Week 9 lecture notes.
Specifically the Polaroid SX-70 format, which ejected a self-contained square with a protective Mylar coating. The complex paste of dyes and developers sat between the layers and took about an hour to fully harden.↩︎
Traditional 35mm photography (championed by Henri Cartier-Bresson) relies on capturing a single, frozen “decisive moment” from a single vantage point. Polaroid collages intentionally shatter this limitation.↩︎