Category Archives: 20×24 Featured Artists

Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimantation

Chuck Close Lucas Samaras John Reuter Andy Warhol Ellen Carey Andre Kertesz Filled with images from a trove of artists from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol, this is the first volume to explore the Polaroid camera’s indelible influence on the history of photography. From its inception in 1947, the Polaroid system inspired artists to experiment–to…

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Portraits of a President

The 20×24 camera has seen its share of Presidents, Vice Presidents and First Ladies. Jimmy Carter was photographed by Ansel Adams in the White House in 1979. Chuck Close photographed Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 1996 and later in New York in 2005. Timothy Greenfield-Sanders photographed George H.W. Bush after his presidency in…

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Barbara Kasten 20×24 Constructs

Barbara Kasten began working with the 20×24 camera in 1981, when she was invited by Polaroid Corporation to come to the studio at 575 Technology Square in Cambridge, MA. Kasten had already been working with Polaroid’s 8×10 material and was well versed in the language of large format cameras. The work, at first minimal later…

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WIRED On Line: Gear Behind the Career: Elsa Dorfman and the Giant Polaroid Camera, by Jakob Schiller

The hulking dinosaur of a camera that photographer Elsa Dorfman has based her career on for over 30 years could soon become extinct. Dorfman, now 74 and living in Cambridge, was first introduced to the 20″x24″ Polaroid in 1980. She had been invited by the company to try one of the 240-pound behemoths that had…

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Jack Butler: 20×24 Polaroid Photographs, Uncovering Hidden Social Issues

From the 20×24 Archives, Jack Butler’s provocative exhibit from 1991: The images in this group of 20 x 24 Polaroid’s are conceptually related to the subjectivizing power of domestic life. They are indicative of an investigation into the cyclictic nature of life and familiar (family) mores. The systematic association of 40’s and 50’s societal imagery…

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