Lucas Samaras: Polaroids

Lucas Samaras was already well known as a sculptor, painter, and performance artist when he began experimenting with photography in 1969. Driven by a desire to document and explore his own body, he used a Polaroid camera to create thousands of lush, idiosyncratic images that pushed the boundaries of both the photographic medium and the genre of self-portraiture. Featuring twenty-four works from The Joslyn’s collection, this exhibition celebrates the innovations and legacy of Samaras’s photography.

Lucas Samaras: Polaroids includes photographs from two iconic series. Between 1969 and 1971, Samaras used a Polaroid 360 camera to produce self-portraits he titled AutoPolaroids. Engaging a process he called “unconscious working,” the artist removed the protective film from the photos following their development and then applied colored ink to the surfaces of the prints to make vivid photo-works. In 1973, he purchased a Polaroid SX-70, a new model that boasted technological advancements in analog photography, while also allowing prints to retain the size and appearance typical of earlier processes. In the Photo-Transformations series, Samaras modified the photographs as they developed using swift, intuitive gestures, such as scraping, incising, and rubbing. By intervening in the development process, Samaras extended the formal possibilities of instant film to create fluid and fantastical images. Intimate, irreverent, and at times disconcerting, the Polaroid photographs of Lucas Samaras are some of the most original representations of the self in art history.

Pictured: Lucas Samaras (American, b. Greece, 1936–2024), AutoPolaroid, 1969–71, dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid film), 2 7/8 × 3 3/4 in. (7.3 × 9.5 cm), Gift of the artist, 2024.6.1.3, © Lucas Samaras, Courtesy Pace Gallery