Polaroids
Polaroid has always been such an important part of my life. In the late 1950's my father first purchased one for my older brother, and at that time I obviously had no idea of how important it would become in my work. In the early 70's when the SX70 was introduced I was very serious about working with it in order to reach certain creative goals as a professional photographer.
Not only was it significant for instant gratification, but its film enabled me to create painterly and moody images which was becoming an important part of my career. This recognized style was also satisfying my initial desire to become a painter.
When my professional career began full-time in 1975 it was a Polaroid 195 that enabled me to have full manual control to test the lighting and exposure. This was common practice amongst professionals, but not very satisfying creatively. So I started experimenting for my own personal creative use with another film that was being introduced by Polaroid: PolaPan! This film was used in a 35mm camera and it gave me amazing results, and wound up to be
a very important part of my fine art work.
In my book "Natural Beauty Farber Nudes” PolaPan was used on the cover image as well as 25 images in the book. I also used this film for a number of images in my “American Mood”
book. After years of strong involvement with Polaroid and the SX70 lead to a promotional contract with the Polaroid Corporation, but the demise of the original Polaroid was also the end of an important era in my career. Now the SX70 is back, and that’s great for those who weren’t around in those earlier days. I myself have been fortunate enough to be there with the original SX70 film and have accumulated hundreds of images. The quality of the results, along with the memories and stories behind these images, are personally sacred.
A selection of Polaroids are available as a Fine Art Posters
This is one of the few Polaroids I made that was not shot with an SX-70.
It was done with a Polaroid 95, one of the original instant cameras we used in the studio back then to check lighting and exposures. I used it here to photograph Vicky, someone I had a long relationship with, because I wanted to capture her with the special quality that camera had.
What I love about it now is that age became part of the image. You can see the wear of time, even the cracks in the print, but to me that only adds to its character.
Because of that, I chose to reproduce it exactly as it was, aged and imperfect, and now I’m presenting it as a poster.
Vicky is available as a Fine Art Poster