sx-70 self-portrait | 1983

Back in the ’70s Polaroid gave SX-70s to artists to see what they could do with the camera and the process. Lucas Samaras, mentioned in a previous post, mucked with the emulsion as the print was developing — here is one example. I had an SX-70, was in art school and learned about Samaras’ work and tried it myself. I was interested in African masks at the time as well as Robert Ferris Thompsons’ book Flash of the Spirit, which led me to the above.

continuing with abstraction

black and white 2 / 2007

These images grew out of some geometric/structural studies that were so seriously manipulated that eventually they looked like textiles and inadvertently echoed Samaras’ fabric works of the late seventies. I’ve enjoyed his work for a long time and I guess he’s been a greater influence than I thought. See image below and link, at the end of the post, to one of Samaras’ reconstructions.

 

Reconstruction no. 74 / Lucas Samaras