 | |
| Author | Wim Wenders |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Photography book |
| Published | 2017 |
| Publisher | Thames & Hudson |
| Pages | 320 |
Instant Stories is a photography book by German filmmaker and photographer Wim Wenders, published in 2017. The book is a collection of more than 400 polaroid photographs taken from 1968 to 2017, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. The book and the related exhibition where received with high critical acclaim. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The book documents a large quantity of polaroid's taken by Wenders under the most diverse circumstances, presenting places, with street and landscape photographs, and events during his film career, specially in the 1970s, including his first travels to the United States, portraits of friends and actors, a travel to Japan to meet Yasujiro Ozu, and film theaters in Germany. Wenders himself wrote the explanatory texts, short stories and haikus of the book. Wenders explained that his purpose back then, more than creating art, was to document life: "It was just part of my life. I would photograph things to do with movies I was making, or when I travelled. It was useful and fun - which I think is what Polaroids were for most people." [5]
The book was accompanied by the exhibition "Instant Stories/Wim Wenders' Polaroids", which took place at The Photographers' Gallery, in London, from 20 October 2017 to 11 February 2018. [6] [7]
The British Journal of Photography praised the book and described it as a "love letter to the Polaroid". [8] Charlotte Irwin, at Financial Times , also praised the book, considering that "Whether it's an intimate glimpse of actor Dennis Hopper or an empty Western landscape, the pictures act as an authentic, unedited documentation of Wenders's life and work, and show the beauty of photography before the filtered age." [9]
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer. He is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals. He has also received a BAFTA Award and been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award.
Helmut Newton was a German-Australian photographer. The New York Times described him as a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."
An instant camera is a camera which uses self-developing film to create a chemically developed print shortly after taking the picture. Polaroid Corporation pioneered consumer-friendly instant cameras and film, and were followed by various other manufacturers.
Instant film is a type of photographic film that was introduced by Polaroid Corporation to produce a visible image within minutes or seconds of the photograph's exposure. The film contains the chemicals needed for developing and fixing the photograph, and the camera exposes and initiates the developing process after a photo has been taken.
Elsa B. Dorfman was an American portrait photographer. She worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was known for her use of a large-format instant Polaroid camera.
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Peter Lindbergh was a German fashion photographer and film director.
The term vernacular photography is used in several related senses. Each is in one way or another meant to contrast with received notions of fine-art photography. Vernacular photography is also distinct from both found photography and amateur photography. The term originated among academics and curators, but has moved into wider usage.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to photography:
Mike Brodie, also known as the "Polaroid Kid" or "Polaroid Kidd", is an American photographer. From 2004 to 2008, Brodie freighthopped across the US, photographing people he encountered, largely train-hoppers, vagabonds, squatters, and hobos. He has published A Period of Juvenile Prosperity (2013), Tones of Dirt and Bone (2015), and the box of reproduction Polaroids Polaroid Kid (2023).
Marie Cosindas was an American photographer. She was best known for her evocative still lifes and color portraits. Her use of color photography in her work distinguished her from other photographers in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of her photographs were portraits and pictures of objects like dolls, flowers, and masks.
John Blakemore, is an English photographer who has worked in documentary, landscape, still life and hand made books. He taught the medium full time from 1970.
Patrick Hoelck is an American filmmaker and photographer based in Los Angeles and New York City. He has received considerable recognition as a photographer for fine art and celebrity advertisements. In addition, he has directed several mainstream music videos.
Gail Thacker is a visual artist most known for her use of type 665 Polaroid positive/negative film in which her subjects — friends, lovers, the city — become intertwined with the process and chemistry of her photos. She attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts and has lived and worked in New York City since 1982. She is part of a group of artists called The Boston School.
Cyrus Mahboubian is a British artist and photographer. He is based in London.
Richard Chase Albertine was an American photographer. His work contributed to the elevation of snapshot-style portraits to the canon of American photography. Later in his life, Albertine focused on depictions of Louisiana's flora, documenting oaks, cypresses, swamp scenes and decaying plants. A lifelong experimenter, he often enhanced his images with the split tone technique.
Frank Hunter is an American documentary and fine-art photographer and university educator. He is known for his photographic landscapes and his mastery of the platinum/palladium process. His interest in photographic processes includes the technical process of exposure and development as well as the psychological and spiritual aspects of creating photographic work. "Hunter has always been famed for transforming the utterly familiar to something rich and strange."
The Polaroid Collection was a collection of fine-art photographs assembled by the Polaroid Corporation. The collection was initiated in the 1940s by Ansel Adams and Edwin Land. Following the company's 2008 bankruptcy, the collection was broken up for sale in 2010.
Pictures from the Surface of the Earth is a photography book by German filmmaker and photographer Wim Wenders, first published in 2001. The book was the result of several travels that Wenders did around the world during 20 years, most when he was directing films and visiting different countries, including Germany, Cuba, the United States, Israel, Japan and Australia, which he documented in his photographic work. The book was made from the catalogue of an exhibition that first took place in 2001, and would be repeated in several different places the following years.
Jonathan Green is an American writer, historian of photography, curator, teacher, museum administrator, photographer, filmmaker and the founding Project Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts. A recognized authority on the history of American photography, Green’s books Camera Work: A Critical Anthology (1973) and American Photography: A Critical History 1945–1980 (1984) are two notable commentaries and frequently referenced and republished accounts in the field of photography. At the same time Green’s acquisitions, exhibitions and publications consistently drew from the edges of established photographic practice rather than from its traditional center. He supported acquisitions by socially activist artists like Adrian Piper and graffiti artist Furtura 2000, and hosted exhibitions on Rape, AIDS, new feminist art, and the work of photographer, choreographer and dancer Arnie Zane, the Diana camera images of Nancy Rexroth, the Polaroids and imitation biplanes of folk artist Leslie Payne, and the digital photographic work of Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer. This alternative focus help prime Green and the competition jury to choose an unconventional, deconstructive architect, Peter Eisenman, previously known primarily as a teacher and theorist, as the architect for the Wexner Center for the Arts. Green has held professorial and directorial positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, and University of California, Riverside.