“Uncertainties, imperfections, limitations and chance are some of the attractions that photographing with Polaroid film has for Travis Paterson. The Lambda prints Entropy and once are comprised of large scans of Polaroid originals. Entropy shows a partial view of a skull. Marked by a flaw in the film’s emulsion that sits in contrast with the corporeal pinks it becomes an inviting memento mori. once is a self-portrait concentrating on a detail of his person: a tattoo of a portrait of a blindfolded man. This tattoo presents, among other things, ideas around knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty, a faith in oneself tempered with doubt. Paterson has said “as the image began to develop it slowly revealed that it wasn’t going to turn out as I had planned. Instead the man became more like a boy, a ghost of my young queer self and this self-portrait became more than I was expecting”. Both are ambiguous portraits that speak of loss and longing. In each work a needle reaches the end of a record, its beat signals finality. Entropy incorporates the evocative sound of church organs to enhance the print’s theme of death and decay while once uses an audio-technique called back-masking in order to emulate the developing process of Polaroid film.”

Jay-Dea Lopez
Curator