It was in the early months of working on my still, not still project that I began to wonder about the possibility of working with Polaroids as part of my process, not necessarily to create finished pieces but as another way of trying to reach into the layers of this project.
I worked with Polaroids once before, many decades ago. I remember enjoying the immediacy of the medium and that it kept me from overthinking things. I also loved that you could interact with the image while it was developing, and most of all, I loved the fact that I never knew exactly what the outcome would be. I could have an idea that I wanted to work with, or to try out, but there was always the potential of the unexpected.
The camera I am working with for this project is not the same Polaroid camera I used decades ago. This one has more settings, which is great, but it also means it’s taking me more time to get comfortable with it. I’ve been running tests and experimenting, trying things out, and my hope is that at some point I’ll be comfortable enough with this camera, so that I can use it instinctually. I feel that it could be a good tool for tapping into a kind of ‘thinking-not thinking’ process where I really have to trust my gut and heart as much as, or even more than, any thought through ideas. It seems to me, that with the Polaroid camera and process, it might be possible to get closer to some of the layers and still hidden bits of this project. Anyways, that’s my hope and it’s one of the main reasons I’ve started to work with Polaroids this year.
I appreciate that this is a process that involves instinct and chance, and that when working with multiple exposures especially, things get hidden while other details might be revealed.
One thing that I did not expect, is that the act of looking at the images (listening to the images) has shifted the way I look and listen. There are times when certain images that I might have initially dismissed, as being overexposed or too muddled or just not interesting, actually begin to reveal things to me.
This process is reminding me of why I work the way I do. It is re-grounding me in things that have been core parts of my practice, for such a long time — working with the sensed … with the felt and the found … with unknowns, as much as with what can be researched or ‘known’ … and working in the interstitial spaces where history, language, and my particular experiences and body meet.
