The basic, consumer Polaroid has dual characteristics of tenuous tactility and, improbably, near total artistic self-reference. Whatever meter applied to the standard digital or analogue photographic process is mitigated by the Polaroid's instant: what is there in front of you now, survived what was there in front of the camera then. Further, the way you appreciate it as such invests the image with an artistically independent quality: this is a Polaroid photo, this is how a Polaroid photo behaves. To the contemporary mind, so trained in the wildly speculative, this flippant verisimilitude is striking.
3 comments:
I had to look up a few words, but I get it now. This is my favorite polaroid so far, I think.
Great. And I didn't even take it. Great. The worst part is, I almost agree. If it weren't for that photo of my wife.
Well, the ones from Miami are pretty exceptional too.
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