Photo-Transformations from the collection of Maddie Williams

Photo-Transformations

Photograph

A catalog from Lucas Samaras 1975 exhibition at the California state university. Samaras’s “photo-transformations” are the result of chemical manipulations the artist made to Polaroid images as they were developing. He scratches, rubs, and scrapes the delicate surface of the print, introducing an aesthetic of controlled agitation that shifts the register of the picture from purely photographic to something more like drawing, etching, or even painting. Samaras was his own model and he appears in every image, many of which were produced in the kitchen of his Upper West Side apartment. The relative banality of that space is taken to menacing extremes through Samaras’s use of colored lights, props, and dramatic body language.