« It is another nature which speaks to the camera rather than to the eye » Walter Benjamin, Little History of Photography (1931)
Abstract photography challenges our popular view of photography as an objective image of reality by reasserting its constructed nature. In Walter Benjamin’s essay on the history of photography, the philosopher and critical theorist articulates photography’s « second nature » as its inherent ability to detach and abstract the visible from the real. Non-representational photography lives in this contested middle ground between material reality and photographic illusion—fact and fiction—first and second natures. Today, anyone who has a cell phone can take and send digital pictures instantaneously. In response to this snapshot culture, many art...
Early last year, the Polaroid Corporation ceased producing its iconic film. The 9th October 2009 will see the final “Use by” or Expiration date of the last batch of Polaroid film manufactured. The exhibition at Atlas will feature a wide selection of Polaroid prints by photographers who have either worked directly with the Polaroid Corporation as part of their research program or who have become famous for the quality of their Polaroid prints either alongside or independent from their traditional camera-based work. It will thus trace the development and use of this unique medium up to the present day. The opening reception will coincide with Polaroid film’s final date of expiration.
The Polaroid or ‘one-step photography’ was invented by Edwin H. Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporati...