The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation

This survey exhibition brought together groundbreaking Polaroid pictures by forty artists spanning the period from the initial release of the SX-70 camera in 1972 until the present. The exhibition centered on experimentation and examined how the invention of instant photography—in particular Polaroid, a brand known for its innovation and responsiveness to artistic endeavors—has influenced and inspired amateurs and professionals for nearly forty years. By juxtaposing early experimental work with more recent forays into the possibilities of the medium, the exhibition told a more complete story of instant photography than had yet been chronicled. The photographs included represented a wide range of approaches and sensibilities and upend established parameters of photography in various ways. Artists represented included such pioneers of instant photography as Ansel Adams, Ellen Carey, Chuck Close, Walker Evans, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Joyce Neimanas, Andy Warhol, and William Wegman as well as a new generation of artists including Anne Collier, Bryan Graf, Catherine Opie, Lisa Oppenheim, Dash Snow, Mungo Thomson, and Grant Worth.

Curatorial research for the exhibition was sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The exhibition was made possible in part by the Smart Family Fund for Art Exhibition Support. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.