Fresh Donor, 2018-2019
This series, entitled Fresh Donor, is an exploration about the process of mixing photographic and painting techniques with Polaroid instant film. I investigated the Polaroid as an object that holds memories and began to deconstruct it by cutting, injecting, burning, and cauterizing it. These medical procedures deteriorate the image quickly and create both non-representational and representational images. These altered photographs become memories of loss and serve as a memento mori. Instant film has an automatic quality that distills the relic into a fleeting moment in time. The Polaroid instantly captures and contains memories within its wide, white square frame as opposed to traditional darkroom photography. The photograph must be imprinted onto a negative through a camera and then developed in chemistry. That negative is exposed onto light-sensitive photographic paper from an enlarger and then developed again in chemistry. It is a rigorous process of recording a moment. Therefore, because of its instantaneous capability, the Polaroid functions as a signifier of the act of remembering and memory.
Through the performative action of dissecting the Polaroid, I have become measured and controlled in my application of additive techniques such as adding liquids like bleach, diluted acrylic paint, and injecting water by syringe. The cuts are surgically precise on the reverse side of the instant film without altering the front and its white frame. These actions begin to change and erase the original image, thus confronting me with its impending “death.” Yet, my grieving period for this death is short. I am at peace with its life cycle as the Polaroid decomposes further.
Looking back, destroying these Polaroids performs two objectives: First, the purging of past traumatic memories through catharsis, and second, my obsession with creating a perfect photograph. Both actions are about the symbolic “death” of my former self, thus allowing me to accept a new path. In effect, I have virtually become the transformed image. As I came to terms with this change, I needed to grieve this symbolic death, which pushed me to further explore the medium of photography by completely obscuring its visual signifiers.
Polaroid instant film naturally decays without proper archival techniques. However, in my experiments, I have sped up those natural and chemical processes and left their remains behind. These images become reanimated, similar to how HP Lovecraft’s character, Herbert West, reanimates body parts through the discovery of a serum in the film adaptation Re-Animator. Although he is not a trained or licensed doctor, Herbert West experiments with the bodies after he kills his victims. Similarly, my Polaroid “creations” are “killed” and then reborn through chemical and environmental processes, but they are not limited to the step-by-step stages of Polaroid decomposition. These chemical properties unite and create a new internal form and a new aesthetic experience. Thus, the Polaroid instant film’s organs are dissected and left open like a wound to be examined, yet, its external frame is left intact.
