Polaroid ceased film production in 2009. The idea of instant cameras will live on in digital technology, free from the distinctive sound of the Polaroid camera and the waving of the Polaroid photo. A little girl who was photographed by her father in the 1940s asked him afterwards, “Why can’t I see the photo now?” The father took this question seriously and spent 30 years tinkering with Polaroid technology. The girl’s impatience to see her portrait and her father’s ambition to answer her question led to the invention of the instant camera. With this new technology, the time it takes to take, view and evaluate a photo has been greatly reduced.
The exhibition “About Now” is based on the theory of photography: the act of observing and photographing, the weapon of the moment, the feeling of being between absence and presence, imaginative thinking, the accumulation of dots on paper that become a whole like water droplets in a cloud … The photograph is an object that allows us to look back into the past again and again – but the exhibition “About Now” will focus on the ‘here and now’. Instead of a classic exhibition, “About Now” aims to express the idea of photography with other media and means and to establish a connection with live actions.
At the vernissage, the works of the individual artists will be installed live in front of the visitors. The empty space will be the prelude to the exhibition, which will slowly fill with the works. Photography and installation will thus not only be staged as a silent and motionless surface, but embedded in a series of actions.
Text by Veronika Spierenburg