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Lizzie Grubman's Wedding, 10/1995

New York Times Magazine feature on Mike Allen

Larry shot images of Mike Allen for The New York Times Magazine's April 25th issue. To see more check out this link:

The New York Times Magazine Online

Stranger in a Strange Land

Surrealism attempts to bring the illogic of the dream to the waking world. In this attempt the traditional association of absurdity with our sleeping-lives is broken. Absurdity floods the ‘real’ world.

Cutting through cultural contexts, absurdity is the closest thing we have to a universal truth. When the context of the everyday, the social world, breaks down, breaks out of itself, each situation, no matter how different or mundane, is revealed to contain the germ of a singular truth. This truth recognizes reality as it has been shaped by the social world and the depths of that reality beyond the limitations of convention.

Everything is suspect, nothing is safe. We are entering a realm past morality, past history; a realm in which the seeming totalities of morality and history are but facets of a much larger picture. The best that can be done is to try and see it as it flits past. Colors and lines and form; in a word, composition. Photography.

Because the instant is the context, photography can access the absurd. In a flash, the form of the world is revealed. The photographer plays the crucial role in this drunken dance. The whole fabric of fate and karma which has determined the course of their lives, including the minutiae of where they stand and how high they hold their camera, all combine to create the moment of the click, the millisecond in which chance and choice lock, merging beyond recognition.


-M.C. Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

Tuscany, Italy, 7/93

Europe, 5/86

Europe, 7/87

Europe, 7/87

France, 7/88

France, 7/89

Italy, 7/90

Portugal, 7/96

Italy, 8/94

Planning a Workshop with Larry

Larry would like to hold a photography workshop on his farm in Martins Creek PA. There are no set dates as of yet, but if you contact us at lfink@ptd.net we will coordinate a date that works with everyone’s summer schedule. The workshop will be one weekend and will consist of portfolio critiques and general fun.

Bring your portfolio, bring a camera, and some sunscreen!

Pricing for the weekend workshop is $435. This includes one sumptuous home cooked diner at the farm and snacks throughout. This price does not include accommodations. Dates and accommodations will be hammered out later.

Polaroids

We found a box of Polaroids in the darkroom. Larry took them nearly 30 years ago. Through their curious magic, we became nostalgic about the content, which we had never actually encountered. When asked about the pictures, all Larry had to say was that Polaroid had long ago given him a free camera and tons of film, and that he had a lot of fun with it.

Polaroid has recently experienced a large resurgence in popularity. We spoke with three fiercely emerging photographers, Mike Brodie, Ying Ang and Annalisa Gonnella, who are working on projects involving Polaroid. Using their impressions of and feelings about the medium, we attempt to explore the nature and popularity of the Polaroid.

Photo ©Mike Brodie

Everyone agrees that Polaroid's recovery is tied to two factors. One is a general desire in the culture for products, which have the mark of the old, of time. "People really like clinging on to old stuff" (Mike Brodie). The second was the decision by PLR IP Holdings, LLC., Polaroid's parents company, to begin producing the film again. This decision placed Polaroid in a position to profit from the ongoing debate in the photographic world between analog and digital technology.

Perhaps Polaroid's greatest strength is its familiarity, an analog landmark in an increasingly digital market. The company is one of the most famous camera brands in the world. Moreover, the form of the photographs, the square and the color as well as the speed with which they develop, combine to create a photographic experience familiar to almost anyone.

This photographic experience is rooted in a very specific materiality. The Polaroid is an object of satisfying immediacy. Within minutes, the subject is captured and developed into a hard copy, a tangible artifact. We see an image emerge from chemicals, mimicking the darkroom; a magic act that proves to us that time exists, placing the Polaroid instantly into the category of memory. These artifacts are fun and as they accrue, stuffed into shoe boxes, they develop into powerful, disjointed, narrative sequences. "They stack up like playing cards, and you shuffle through them and look back on photos you took" (Brodie).

Photo ©Mike Brodie

The structural limitations of the Polaroid, the square format and lack of zoom, create formal parameters, which challenge and stimulate photographers. "With the Polaroid, I get much closer and shoot in a more subjective, intimate way... I've realized that the square format forces me to truncate my subjects in unusual ways to compose a dynamic frame, or at least an unexpected one" (Ying Ang).

Photo ©Ying Ang

In addition to forcing angles and compositions photographers would normally not employ, the Polaroid's lack of focus creates an inherent element of chance. "To me, this means the possibility to be free in a kind of vision whereby the image must take care of itself" (Annalisa Gonnella).

Photo ©Annalisa Gonnella

Another familiar and important aspect of Polaroid's is their color palette. "Muted palettes, creams, burgundies and jade green- what's not to like" (Ying Ang)? The color combines with soft focus to create images existing in the suspended time of a dream. The everyday appears to us as if from a great distance. Through "this faded, dull tone, you are instantly presented with the reverse of your vision, that is, with a memory" (Annalisa Gonnella).

All things considered, Polaroid's aesthetic features have cracked the code for producing a sense of remembrance and nostalgia. In a world where technology has compounded and destabilized the categories of identity and memory, PLR IP Holdings, LLC., is betting that people will continue to respond to Polaroid as a means of creating connections to their own lives.

-M.C. Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

Photo ©Ying Ang

To see more work by the interviewed artists check out the following links:

Ying Ang
Mike Brodie

If you're interested in seeing more work by other photographers who work with Polaroids check out the work of Lucas Samaras and Les Krims.

To see more of Larry's Polaroids check out our blog post "Contents of a Box."

Contents of a Box

Civil Rights Coda

“I claim my birthright! A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear

imagining the throng of Selves

that makes this nation one body of Prophecy.”

-Allen Ginsburg, Wichita Vortex Sutra

"A politics of solidarity…must inevitably run up against the hard facts of political economy…As we’ve seen, black America isn’t just as fissured as white America; it is more so…As economic differences increase, the need to maintain the appearance of cultural and ideological conformity also increases. But it is these fake masks of conformity that disguise how very vast black class differentials really are…Black America needs a politics whose first mission isn’t the reinforcement of the idea of black America; and a discourse of race that isn’t centrally concerned with preserving the idea of race and racial unanimity. We need something we don’t yet have: a way of speaking about black poverty that doesn’t falsify the reality of black advancement, a way of speaking about black advancement that doesn’t distort the enduring realities of black poverty. "

- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Parable of the Talents from The Future of the Race.

Larry took the image of Obama parting the crowd on the 2008 campaign trail. This picture fulfills Allen Ginburg's quote. Raised from a long lineage of civil rights activists, Obama is speaking a language of hope. During his campaign, he transformed into an icon for America to reach towards or reject.

He is forcefully parting the crowd to offer us a path to follow, a path that affirms change.

-M.C Newton & Dani Bogenhagen