November 18th looks to be a date for your calenders in more ways than one. The photography community will be spoilt for choice between our Dada inspired info exchange party, Take 5ive, and the opening of WIN talent, Roberto De Luna’s exhibition, The Lost Weekend at the Michael Mazzeo Gallery.
The Lost Weekend presents a collection of 100 Polaroid prints which explore our intrinsic, subconscious need to attach ourselves to the physical – to identify something recognisable in what we see. De Luna’s images convey a familiar resonance within the viewer as they are encouraged to bridge the dissonance between each image, forming a collective ephemeral narrative between the semiotics of each image.
It seems interesting that the aesthetics of De Luna’s Polaroid prints, reflect so heavily on our contemporary revolution of mobile, low resolution, photography; from Hipstamatic iPhone images to Poladroid snaps. In conversation with De Luna, his reasoning for selecting the analogue formula is a direct reflection upon the medium’s parallel to the human memory – each will age and fade over time, creating, with each new viewing, a new understanding of the subject. Roberto also comments on the physicality of the analogue format, there is a different connotation to “having something in hand.” Perhaps this is a romanticism that stems from a nostalgic perspective achieved through film imagery as opposed to the digital medium but De Luna also suggests the alternate; that it is due to our desire to believe in the honesty of the printed image. “But photos lie…” Roberto De Luna
Submit your own Polaroids and Mobile Imagery to WINg, WIN-Initiative’s New Collection.
