Intimographies

2004-2010; Fifteen original Polaroids, Fifteen iTouch devices Fifteen specially made wooden boxes, lined with velvet on the inside and inlaid on the exterior with the iconic outline of the Polaroid on one side and that of the iTouch on the other.

Intimographies mines the volatile terrain of the forms of intimacy transacted through handheld, instant photographic technologies that bypass the darkroom—from the vintage SX-70 Polaroid of the 1970s to the iPhone and its “Polaroidizing” apps such as Polarock and ShakeIt. The installation approached the question of what, if anything, is new about new media. The installation consists of digital photographic images produced by the iPhone camera and altered by the iPhone apps “Shake It” and “Polarock” that recreate the SX-70 Polaroid effect for the camera phone. These are displayed as cycling slide shows on the glowing screens of iTouch devices set in specially designed cases next to original Polaroid prints shown in their tiny 3x4 inch delicate and glossy format. With this inter-nested side-by-side presentation of Polaroids and Polaroidized digital images, Intimographies sets up an experiential navigation of the ways in which new digital media are haunted by the old. As condensed agents of a temporally and spatially volatile form of intimacy that crosses time, the Polaroid emerges not as the opposite of the digital images in handheld devices but as one of its internal, animating ghosts.

Exhibited in New Media at the Charles Allis, Charles Allis Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 1 to September 15, 2010.

Karin Wolf, “Review: New Media at the Charles Allis,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (September 14, 2010).