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Altered Instants: Polaroid Transfers
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19169 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
1,654 Words |
| Author
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Larry R. Thall
Larry R. Thall is a photography writer for the Chicago
Tribune and former managing editor of Photomethods magazine |
An innocent, romantic view of the world emanates from the Polaroid transfer prints of Jennifer Colten. Yet embodied within the borders of her minuscule images is the essence of the medium's hottest controversy--what a photograph should look like--a debate that dates back to the early years of this century.
"The process has revolutionized the art and craft of photography and is still barely across the threshold of development." That's what Ansel Adams had to say about the Polaroid instant-print process in 1963, after nearly ten years of working with the material.
Certainly, Polaroid Corporation has done its part to prove Adam's prediction correct. Since 1963, the company has introduced a host of innovative products, including the SX-70 camera, Spectra Pro camera, instant films for 8-by-10 inch view cameras, instant 35mm slide films, and much more.
Adams himself was instrumental in showing professional photographers that Polaroid materials could be employed for serious, "straight" photography, as well as for family snapshots, insurance documentation, and scientific applications.
Just as important, though, are the many contemporary fine-art photographers since Adams who've used unorthodox techniques to expand the aesthetic boundaries of Polaroid image making. Indeed, the simplicity of instant photography seems to beckon the creative spirit to break the rules.
Colten, a 28-year-old photography instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, is open to such experimentation. Using a technique developed only a few years ago, Colten makes Polaroid transfers--mostly urban-roof-top views vaguely reminiscent of watercolors by Edward Hopper and exquisite, small-scale still lifes, arranged by windows and bathed in angled rays of afternoon sunlight. Her work features a condensed palette of subtle hues as well as sumptuous textures not found in traditional Polaroid prints.
Yet it's likely that if he were alive today, Adams--a champion of straight photography--would view Colten's work as atavistic aesthetic heresy, for a Colten Polaroid transfer resembles a watercolor painting or lithographic print. "As long as the final result of the procedure is photographic, it is entirely justified," Adams wrote about manipulative photographic techniques in 1943. "But when a photograph has the 'feel' of an etching, lithograph, or any other graphic medium, it is
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