People, we grow up through limitation.
December 26, 2019
This blog site collects an ongoing series of Polaroid pictures, which started in 2020. Back in 2019, I prompted myself to take Polaroid pictures for a year to see how far I could go using a device with ultra-limited options. Almost five years later, it is still ongoing.
At first, I wanted to use the Polaroid's quick process and dreamy aesthetics to pay homage to simplicity. As 2020 went by, the exercise also became the incidental documentation of unfolding questions, uncertainty, and the creative process while in lockdown. The resulting images couldn't be any more different than how I originally envisioned them, displaying solitary walks, empty rooms, and the sporadic, socially distanced, moments with close ones.
Throughout the years, this project has changed, evolved, and returned to its original purpose many times. However, one thing remains consistent throughout this time: I've found a sense of comfort in these images. Perhaps it lives in each of the small grains that give shape to the people, places, and memories they portray. It brings back a sense of spontaneity and belonging that I crave from years of working with digital processes. In some of them, I've also observed how my digitally trained mind aims for a different pace and light use while the nature of the analog image demands for a different aesthetic, composition, and symbolic approach. Some others communicate primal forms, like children's drawings hanging on a rope in a kindergarten classroom.
The always-changing result turns out exasperating and hopeful at the same time. I'm choosing to believe I'm planting seeds of a larger imagery that will one day be capable of holding stories on their own. For now, I'm building an archive of longing impressions, limited expressions in search of a natural something else, an invisible purpose that lies outside of the frame. Loyal to the spirit that gave them birth, each of them holds a suspended timeframe that carries more questions than answers in them.
Volatile, fragile, beautifully unpredictable: here's to a dazzling present, honoring each of life's processes.
