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Polaroids in the Present Tense

by Megan Driscoll

As photography reached the hands of the public, it became a symbol for accessibility, immediacy, the ability to record one's surroundings with the click of a button. Although this point-and-shoot mentality is typically associated with the amateur, the tourist photographer, the thrill of speed and chance has its own currency in the arts.

Walker Evans reportedly took an immense number of portraits with an instant Polaroid camera toward the end of his career. And, of course, the name Andy Warhol is near to synonymous not only with Campbell's soup cans and pop art, but also with Polaroid photography, a medium he primarily used to document the celebrity personas who made The Factory a place to be seen.

In an era when digital technology has replaced the instant camera for point-and-click satisfaction, the persistence of the Polaroid speaks to its roots in the photographic tradition. Much like the Holga or Lomo camera, there is a texture to a Polaroid image that cannot be conveyed by pixels. This rough aesthetic recalls the eerie, often distorted beauty of Victorian photography and generates nostalgia in viewers living in the digital age. In July, the Sugar Gallery exhibited the Polaroid photography of two artists, Michael Demeo and Yoni Kifle.

Kifle, who is part of the Polaroid Photography Collective, capitalizes on this haunting sensation. His images take you through an airport, onto a plane, and back to the ground. However, rather than rely on narrative to captivate the viewer, his work builds a picture of the spaces around him that conveys the quiet isolation of travel. There is often something markedly lonely about a crowded airport, and Kifle has captured that sensation. Moving between deep perspective and disorienting close-ups, the images speak of solitude; young travelers smile uncertainly at his camera while deserted baggage claims wait for passengers and their cargo.

Photo Courtesy of the Artist and Sugar Gallery

Although Kifle relies on the nostalgia generated by the roughness of the Polaroid to express such feelings, his images subtly reject the casual side of that aesthetic. Closer inspection reveals that these are not pictures taken blindly, but with a careful eye to the formal composition of space and color. Kifle uncovers a startling visual richness in the contrast between the deep green carpet and glowing yellow lights of the baggage claim, and shows us the strange beauty of the tarmac bathed in yellow nighttime lights. He uses center-point perspective to render the march down the walkway as interminable as it often feels, and builds a still life out of his Heineken and peanuts.

Photo Courtesy of the Artist and Sugar Gallery

Kifle relies on the subtle use of traditional compositional elements to keep the rawness of the Polaroid photograph at bay, while still capturing the emotional atmosphere of the medium.

Demeo, on the other hand, throws himself wholeheartedly into the gritty side of the Polaroid. Many of his images use double exposure to create a blurry narrative, or simply draw the connection between a flower and a beautiful girl. His images focus primarily on people and rarely appear carefully composed. Demeo gives us quick shots that cut off tops of heads and lower bodies to draw attention to eroticized torsos. One series shows a woman in a pink bikini bringing a wine bottle to her lips; another displays a woman posing in her underwear between two men, the imminent ménage á trois charging the pictures with sexuality.

Photo Courtesy of the Artist and Sugar Gallery

The connection between Polaroid and sex is titillating in its relationship to amateur pornography and the feeling that the photographer caught real people in the act. It is this "realness" that seems to interest Demeo. Even his images that don't rely on that seductive equation work in the snapshot mode, expressing the beauty found in an unselfconscious instant that was once thought to be the great treasure of photography. In one image a girl strums on her guitar; in another, two couples, double-exposed, nuzzle and make out. In this way, Demeo connects more closely than Kifle with the artistic niche that Holga and Lomo photographers have carved out for themselves.

Photo Courtesy of the Artist and Sugar Gallery

Beauty and visual pleasure are revealed both through chance and through the photographer's ability to simply point the camera and expose something worth looking at.

In their unique mood and textured aesthetic, Polaroids persist beyond the satisfaction of the instantaneous. Being pushed out of the mainstream by the digital market has actually cemented the Polaroid's hold on the art community, as it finally separates from the stigma of the hobbyist and builds its own artistic niche.