Margot Adler, NPR correspondent
[UPDATE (and a second update below): You can hear me now, by going to NPR’s online audio. (My remarks begin at about 1:21 into the piece.) I recommend that you listen to Margot’s commentary, rather than just reading the text posted last night online (which I link to here, two paragraphs below this one). The radio report offers greater detail and more flavor.]
In a piece to be aired tomorrow on NPR‘s Weekend Edition Sunday, 8-10 a.m., Margot Adler (whose voice you can hear on my CultureGrrl Video at the bottom of this post) discusses next week’s controversial auction at Sotheby’s of photographs from the Polaroid Corporation’s collection.
The text related to tomorrow’s piece is online today, with a brief quote from me, discussing a deckle-edged Ansel Adams photo of a stream that had caught my attention at the presale exhibition. It arrested me not only because of its quality but also because it reminded me of my own family’s snapshots from the ’50s, when deckle-edged borders were all the rage.
Below is an inadequate image of the photograph—actual size: a mere 2 7/8 by 3 7/8 inches—that I referred to in my comments to Margot. (She had asked me which works in the presale exhibition had particularly stood out for me.)
Ansel Adams, “Ocean and Tidal Stream,” late 1940s or 1950s
Actually, this is my photo of the image of Lot 67 from the auction catalogue. It doesn’t begin to do justice to the quality and detail of the original (but you can clearly see the deckle edge of the border). The catalogue informs us that this is “among the earliest Polaroid
photographs” from the company’s collection.
What amazed me was the texture of the water and the sweep of the composition that Adams was able to capture through such modest means in such small space. And that, of course, was the reason why Polaroid’s founder, the inventor Edwin Land, had involved Adams and other artists in the use of Polaroid’s products—to explore the potential of instant cameras. Those somewhat clunky contraptions were, in a sense, forerunners of today’s sleek instant-gratification digital devices that allow us to see images as soon as we shoot them.
I’ll update this post tomorrow with NPR’s audio, once it’s available online. [Now done, at the top of this post.]
ADDITIONAL UPDATE: If you read the comments at the end of Adler’s online piece, you may see that mine was removed and flagged as “inappropriate.” I had merely linked to the CultureGrrl post that you’re now reading—something I had done previously on NPR’s site without incident. Who knew?