Every family has them.
Pinned to bulletin boards, glued to scrapbooks, magneted to refrigerators, these 3-and-one-half by 4-and-one-quarter rectangles of moments immortalized in less than a minute are portals to memories across America.
And now, they’re art.
The Photographic Resource Center at Boston University and the Boston University Art Gallery have collaborated to exhibit ‘American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection’ to demonstrate the diversity and vitality of artistic uses of Polaroid photography, according to a press release from the gallery.
The joint exhibitions highlight the significance of Polaroid photography. The Boston University Art Gallery chose to focus on representation and self-representation, while the Photographic Resource Center looks at how artists have affected the nature of images and the image-making process itself, according to the press release.
An overview of the history of the Polaroid and its films and processes is included in the galleries.
‘This is a great opportunity to showcase a very important company to Boston,’ said Leslie Brown, curator of the PRC, referring to the Polaroid Company’s 1937 formation in Cambridge.
Brown said she organized the PRC’s exhibition of the show into five major themes highlighting her interest in the implications of ‘imaging an image.’
The section ‘Images of/from Pop Culture’ shows how artists have turned to history for material and their use of Polaroids. Artist David Levinthal’s dramatic images of toy figurines from the 1950s are shown alongside the work of Carrie Mae Weems, who uses plastic figures of African-Americans to provoke a sense of isolation. Images of popular advertisements are also exhibited.
‘Interestingly, the recycling of images from popular culture occurs with great regularity in Polaroids,’ Brown said.
Another section, ‘Manipulation and Process,’ highlights the desire of artists to legitimize photography as art. In ‘Untitled,’ photographer Lucas Samaras heated and scratched a Polaroid immediately after taking it.
‘Photos of Photos’ explores the artistic experience of taking a photo of a previously shot image.
‘The doubling effect of photographing a photo can serve as a metaphor for memory itself. Like Alice going through the looking glass, an image in a photograph might serve as a time and space machine, a shared cultural vehicle and symbol through which we can enter the work,’ Brown wrote in her essay of the exhibition, which was released in the recent PRC newsletter.
The Polaroid is used as both raw and source material in ‘Composites.’ Photos from the largest Polaroid in existence, from the only 40-by-80-inch camera, currently located in New York, are displayed.
Artist David Hockney’s ‘Interior, Pembroke Studios’ is a large photograph of an immense photographic collage. Brown said taking a photograph of a photograph was becoming a more popular form of art in today’s society.
‘This practice is akin to assembling a puzzle and photographing the result to prove its existence,’ said Brown.
Opening receptions for the exhibition took place on Nov. 21 with more than 300 people attending.
‘This is an incredibly important show with very big names,’ Brown said. ‘There was an incredible amount of foot traffic through here.’
The exhibit, currently taking place both at the PRC and the Boston Art Gallery, continues to draw viewers, according to event organizers. On Dec. 4, Brown said she will be hosting a gallery talk starting at 1 p.m. at the PRC located at 602 Commonwealth Ave. The entire exhibition will close on Jan. 26, 2003.
‘This is one of the first major exhibitions of the Polaroid Collection,’ Brown said. ‘It is a great new era for Polaroid, highlighting its importance to artists.’
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