Presence, or Polaroid Ghosts (Part 15)

Part 14 My second memory concerning a Polaroid photo appearing in pop culture was one taken by a maniac. This maniac had hitched a ride from some naïve teenagers in the sweltering outback of Texas and was freaking them out with his variety of macabre hobbies. He’d just visited the local slaughterhouse before they picked him up. He didn’t work there. He just liked it. … Continue reading Presence, or Polaroid Ghosts (Part 15)

Presence, or Polaroid Ghosts (Part 10)

Part 9 In 1859, the Harvard poet and medical professor Oliver Wendell Holmes described photography in a much earlier guise as being a ‘mirror with a memory.’ One aspect lost in this oft-quoted soundbite by the noted medical reformer was that he was discussing photography as explicitly producing an object. It is the photograph that is the mirror because the viewer can look and see … Continue reading Presence, or Polaroid Ghosts (Part 10)