quackquack

Burnished Polaroids around Philly circa 1996: The New York Times is asking for reader’s old Polaroids. Thankfully Archive.org does a good job of keeping my old personal websites accessible and here are some burnished Polaroids from the late 1990s. From left to right:

• Walnut Street Bridge, Philadelphia. This is a favorite site of mine to photograph because of the rightward sweep of the river, railroad tracks and highway.
• Fire hydrant, Walt Whitman Center, Camden. I was waiting to usher for a Allen Ginsburg reading and combed the block looking for celebration of the day.
• Wissahickon Creek, Philadelphia. A favorite place to walk and contemplate life.

The technique (written around 1998): This is a style of photography I got into a few years ago. It’s appeal is simple: it takes little technical expertise and the process itself is limited in time. Everything boils down to basic form: a successful photo depends on setting up a good shot and then bringing it’s potential out in the burnishing.

Anyone who used Polaroids as a kid will remember the wait. When the film comes out of the camera, it’s still black. Within a few minutes a ghost of the photo begins to appear, a image which is fleshed out in about ten minutes time. During this time, the photo is developing inside of it’s plastic casing. If you press hard on the plastic before the photo comes out, all sorts of effects can be achieved. Depending on the pressure and temperature, you can get colors to bend, scratches to streak across the photo, etc. If done well, the burnishing can take on the effect of brush strokes and create an impressionististic photograph.