Walker Evans Polaroids

Walker Evans Polaroids: Summertime Fun

Alright, here it is, summer project 2011. Soooo much fun, well a little work.
I had the privilege of photographing 716 Walker Evans Polaroids over the course of two weeks. Kind of a hired gun situation (pardon the metaphor, remember I don’t shoot things!), but I wasn’t going to pass this up. Thanks to John ffrench, Josh Chuang, and the helpful PPD staff for having me, and helping me get through this many objects in only two weeks!

Update: added a project page for Walker Evans Polaroids, all 716 fronts and moved the in depth project description too.

Cozy summer cave:

Studio Layout

Closer
Some closer views of the photography stand below here. Lights were cross polarized and Polaroids were held down under glass.

Photography Stand

Glass Hold Down

The Trick, ‘er Method
The trick (or more professionally sounding, the studied method) for this type of high volume / high quality project is a consistent, smooth workflow. Objects are batched out in chunks that make sense for both equipment and human attention. I’m pretty good at estimating how long something will take me in the early project planning phase (i.e. estimate of cost for client), but there is always a slightly panicky “rubber meets the road” period in the first day or two. I plan quite a bit and do test shooting on prop objects if needed. The goal of this project was high quality human inspected color correction (not what is often referred to as “rapid imaging”) for each object. The objects have been fading and changing over time and photographing them now as faithfully as possible at least creates a record for this time that will last.