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When was the last time you developed a photo? When was the last time you held a picture of your mom, your brother, your partner or your beloved pet in your hand or tucked it into a wallet for safekeeping? Chances are, because of the digital culture we currently live in, most of your pictures are either taken on a phone or stored on a computer.
Today, essentially everything is an “instant photograph” since people are now able to easily and quickly capture moments with phones, digital cameras and even computers. However, the Polaroid trend has reappeared, showing that there is nothing quite as pleasantly nostalgic as the instant gratification of holding a picture in your hand minutes after you take it. As The Economist writes, “There is no frame for an image more familiar than the white border of a Polaroid instant photograph.”
Although the Polaroid picture is an optional trend of photography today, the Polaroid SX-70 was the digital camera of its day. According to TIME, when Edwin Land, the founder of the Polaroid, unveiled “the world’s first instant camera” in 1947, it was “a triumph of innovation that would go on to revolutionize photography.”
The Polaroid camera develops a picture that is different from other photos. Christopher Bonanos, a New York Magazine editor, says on an interview with Art News, “Polaroid looks different than other photography, much in the way of Kodachrome, with its own color palette and characteristics.” Because of this, many artists have actually experimented with the Polaroid picture.
Before the Polaroid even became a pop-culture obsession, it was the main medium for various photographers in the business. In fact, Art News writes, “Polaroid cameras have been used as fine-art instruments, at nearly every model and stage.” Here are some artists – ranging from Andy Warhol to Ansel Adams – who have experimented with the original instant photograph.
Although Andy Warhol is best known for his pop art paintings of celebs and Campbell soup cans, he also had a collection of Polaroid portraits. According to the New York Film Academy, his Polaroid images “served as a source of inspiration for his painted works [and] the photographs themselves are a work of art.”
Warhol photographed people such as Dolly Parton, Diana Ross and Georgio Armani. He even photographed portraits of himself. In a 1980 photograph by Bill Ray, Andy Warhol is seen standing in front of his Polaroid Camera while holding a Polaroid of himself. TIME writes, “Warhol was a famous enthusiast of the instant cameras, although he’s best known for favoring the ‘junky’ Polaroid Big Shot, which he would bring to parties, gallery openings and museums.”
According to Art News, Lucas Samaras became famous for pressing on the surface of his SX-70 printed photos. Instead of waiting to see what developed, Samaras manipulated the ink before it fully dried by keeping the gelatin-based emulsion wet under the Mylar cover for hours at a time.
Smithsonian magazine writes that he even “[manipulated] the colored dyes on the ejected drying photographs with whatever was handy, whether it was pins or rubber erasers.” As a result, many of his self-portraits finished developing with patterned, wavy textures. Many of his images appeared surrealistic and, as the Smithsonian describes, “other worldly.”
This photographer used the instant camera in order to take realistic Polaroid photos of four inch toys. As Time writes, Levinthal’s “American Beauties” series of 1989 and 1990 “suggests both innocence and foreboding.” One of his most famous images is the Polaroid of a small female toy in a bikini. The toy is posed in a casual, relaxed position and the image blurs at just the right angles to make the ground look like sand.
Because these toys are taken at angles to make them seem life-like, the audience is often thrown off guard as these “simple subjects become something new and unsettled.” According to a Stanford article, Levinthal says, “I have been intrigued with the idea that these seemingly benign objects could take on such incredible power and personality simply by the way they were photographed.”
In order to develop this intrigue, he used the Polaroid and carefully selected the depth of field to “create a sense of movement and reality that was in fact not there.”
Although this artist is best known for his large-scale landscape images, New York Film Academy writes that Adams also used the Polaroid SX-70 to take smaller-scale landscape photographs. In fact, Adams published a book in 1963 titled Polaroid Land Photography, which showcases many of the instant images he took throughout his career.
These pictures are very special because, as New York Film Academy says, “Adams’ Polaroid images created tones that were not possible to recreate through other formats.” Many of these pictures were developed with muted, vintage tones that were unique to the Polaroid.
Unlike the other artists on this list, Hockney was famous for using a collection of Polaroid photographs to create one giant image. With his Polaroid camera, he created large-scale portraits of people, still life images of guitars and other household items and even photographic collages of landscapes. According to the New York Film Academy, Hockney typically displayed his photographs in collage form. Individual images were overlapped with each other to create a final image.
His Polaroid photos were completed similarly, however, unlike his other photos, he took the collection of squares and lined them up side by side to create a final picture. Because of his layering technique, the varying focal lengths and different perspectives, his work is often said to be inspired by Cubism.
Although today the Polaroid picture is not as high-tech and high-quality as some manipulated and Photoshopped digital images, artists in the past used Polaroid cameras to create unique photographs and portraits. The “vintage” look that you may enjoy today with your Polaroid or Fujifilm instant camera is actually used as a form of art by some of the world’s best known artists. So the next time you snap a photo of you and your friends, think about how far photography has come and enjoy putting yourself in the creative shoes of Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams or even David Hockney.
