Polaroids

My love for analog & integral film...

When reading about the "cut-up method" - a technique where you cut-up a text and then create a new work from the fragments of the old - there was a little note about how William S. Burroughs used this technique. To be clear, Burroughs popularized the method, but learned about from this Brion Gysin at the Beat Hotel.

Burroughs used this technique to create a hex - but he didn't use text exclusively. He used the tools readily available in his era, voice recorders, interviews, newspaper and film cameras to affect the universe by manipulating these objects as sort-of hyper-altars.

Wait, what does this mean? Why include this in a portfolio?

The reason I fell in love with Polaroid is simple: integral film is fascinating and the SX-70 is a marvel of engineering even to this day.

Integral film I find peculiar because it is both positive and negative, it instantly develops in hand. No $20,000 DSL-R, HD-R camera can take a picture and put the product in your hand in moments. Period.
(OK, you can get a portable micro-printer, but that camera doesn't do it alone)

Positive and negative combined into one - this means that a Polaroid image doesn't lie. So much so, that Polaroid images are admissible in a court of law. The combined nature of integral film also creates avatars or altars as far as I am concerned. You take an image with a Polaroid camera, and there's a life to it, this magnetism can be influenced through ritual. Sounds far-fetched? Try it for yourself.

Burroughs used a series of modern tools and affected his hex on a particular building - and the results are very interesting. Whether creating metaphysical representations of the visible universe, or just pointing a lens and capturing the ethereal essence of the subject - I just love Polaroid cameras.