Around this time in April last year, I had just wrapped up the most wonderful opening artist reception for my gallery exhibition at Lille Aeske Arthouse - the sweetest little gallery in Boulder Creek, California.
Titled “Mistakes Were Made”, this show was an exploration of polaroid and polaroid derived images that I made through play and experimentation. Often times I’ll read an instruction manual, but there comes a time when I just want to dive in and try something. I put this show together to embrace mistakes and see the beauty in them. I fell in love with the scratches, the dust, the bubbling and curling chemistry of these polaroids. For many of these images it was a long process from when I first captured the image in camera to these final images, involving many many stages. But for others, I was winging it in the moment - the film wouldn’t pull through the chamber correctly, or the chemistry pack wouldn’t pop open as it should to coat the paper so I would hand squeeze it to create these marks. It felt so exciting to not really know what the end result was going to be, to let go of compositional control to embrace a new vision.
I hope during this strange time we’re all going through you find time to play and experiment too. Look for magic in the unexpected, in the trial and error, and embrace the limitations provided by our need to stay home.
Sadly my favorite film stock that was used in most of these images is no longer manufactured - RIP fp100c. I love that Supersense has launched a new version of this film but when I went to try my usual technique things didn’t work out as I expected. I suppose it’s just another good reason to play around and make a few more mistakes.
