Open Studios 2024

In this evolving body of work inspired by Rhiannon Adam, Lucas Samaras, and Andy Warhol's work with Polaroids, I explore the idea of material surfaces and layers by cutting apart and dissecting Polaroids to expose the layers of film emulsion. In some pieces, I use the emulsion lift process and soak Polaroids in water to transfer the image to a new surface.

The materiality and history of Polaroid photographs is especially interesting to me because they are unique and immediately physical objects. For example, Polaroids were historically used by law enforcement to document evidence because they couldn’t be forged. They were considered trustworthy and synonymous with the truth because they couldn’t be reproduced or edited in the darkroom. After discovering that, I was curious to experiment with overlaying Polaroid emulsion lifts on darkroom prints as evidence of a truth, while simultaneously subverting that notion of objectivity by manipulating the Polaroid emulsion with wrinkles and folds so you cannot fully decipher what was in the Polaroid photograph or the print underneath. This lends itself to the idea of crafting evidence based on constructed narratives rather than documenting a single truth.