Category: Polaroid

Polaroid and AI-generated motifs form a symbiosis as testimonies of a possible past.

What is real? What is unique? Polaroid photography embodied both for a long time. Today, it is experiencing a renaissance both in its original form with the help of old Polaroid cameras from flea markets and in hybrid form, i.e. analogue-digital, app-controlled or even entirely digital.

Here, nothing is real: for this work, I let an AI generate thirty-three portraits based on baroque models. Therefore neither the scenes nor the people depicted ever existed. And yet the Polaroid as a medium lends this work something plausible and authentic.

The Doina is a folk music style with Arabic-Persian roots and is native to Romania. It is comparable to the Portuguese fado or the Afro-American blues; hence it can be described as “musical lamentation”. Typical for it is the free rhythm and improvised coloratura of a traditional melody. In this way, a singer or musician can perfectly express his feelings and virtuosity.

Similar to the Doina, these eight Polaroids show a place of longing that, with the help of the technical inadequacy of a Polaroid camera, is repeatedly distorted and thus varied. This place will be removed from its spatial and temporal allocation. This merges the present with the past and reality with fiction.

“Noise” is a physical disturbance variable with a non-specific frequency spectrum, which is perceived acoustically as a high-frequency noise. (Wikipedia)

Memory is also a kind of “non-specific noise” in the head. It resonates unnoticed in daily life, influences thought and action and shapes our identity.

The Polaroid camera makes memory visible. It has a subjective and inaccurate view of the world. In it, the present rushes and leaves a daring glimpse of the past. Its outputs are like EEGs – recordings of brain waves that reflect the world in unspecific noise.