Vortrag: "A serious toy – das Polaroid als Experiment und System"

In the organizer's words:

As part of the exhibition "Herbert Döring-Spengler", we invite you to an interesting lecture by Dennis Jelonnek (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte Paris, research field Media of Art History), entitled "A serious toy - the Polaroid as experiment and system".

Content
"The first experiments that led us towards this ideal (of Polaroid instant photography) were carried out in March 1944 and it was a startling experience to realize how quickly preliminary results can be obtained when one has a fixed objective in mind."

This self-confident statement was made by Edwin Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporation and key inventor of what was initially known as one-step photography. The passage is part of the essay "The Universe of One-Step Photography", which Land published after leaving his company in the late 1980s.

In retrospect, everything seems to have been somewhat simpler than it actually was; and so we can also assume here that the invention of the Polaroid and the associated camera took far more effort and resources than the quote suggests. However, it is of interest in another respect: For the central concept of experimentation runs thematically like a red thread through the history of instant photography and proves to be so insightful because it was important for both the developer and the user side.

Combined with the concepts of "system" on the one hand and "game" on the other, this triad allows us to look at the Polaroid beyond conventional photographic historiographies.

In his lecture, Jelonnek would therefore like to experiment a little himself in order to use these three concepts to take an alternative look at the development and use of instant photography in science, art and everyday life, for which a hitherto largely unnoticed book on the so-called "SX-70 Art" will form the starting point.

Price information:

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