Polaroids

I am drawn to Polaroid photography as an antidote to pristine, hyper-real representations of landscape.

Vast spaces are compressed into small, intimate objects that can be held in the hand. This compression makes visible the abstraction inherent in photography, where place becomes a bounded fragment, separated from its original scale and context.

Each print is both image and object, made once and developing beyond my complete control. Temperature, handling and photographic chemistry leave traces in its surface. The photograph becomes a residue of an encounter among body, place and material.

The familiar form of the Polaroid carries a nostalgia for lost histories and futures, while its physical and chemical instability keeps the image elusive. It does not fix the landscape or claim to describe it fully. The landscape remains partial, suggestive and unknowable.