The future of a major collection of Polaroid photographs has been secured by Vienna’s WestLicht Museum of Photography. The Museum and its owner – Peter Coeln – have announced the purchase of the International Polaroid Collection, as well as plans to share it with the public in an exhibition running June through August 2011 at the Museum.

The acquisition ensures the continued existence of the collection, which was at risk of being broken up for sale at auction after being placed on the market by liquidators dealing with the Polaroid company. The collection-which, since 1990, had been housed at the Swiss Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne-consists of 4.400 artworks from 800 artists, including the likes of Peter Beard, Robert Mapplethorpe, Minor White, Ansel Adams, Sally Mann, and Andy Warhol. It was compiled by the company between 1970 and 1990.

Physicist and Polaroid founder Edwin Herbert Land invented the instant film process in the late 1940s, and from the beginning invited famous artists to experiment with the material. Prior to its insolvency, the company had two major collections – one based in Europe and the other in the U.S. Rarities from the American collection were sold at auction by Sotheby’s in New York in 2010.

The WestLicht has also joined forces with the Impossible Project, which saved the last existing Polaroid film factory in Enchede, Netherlands, and is developing new film material for traditional Polaroid cameras. In the spirit of Polaroid’s collaborative history, Impossible also invites artists to work with the new film. Some of the resulting works will be included in the June exhibition.

Check out images from the International Polaroid Collection, courtesy of the WestLicht Museum, below. For more information on the collection, visit the WestLicht Museum site.

*above: Mary Ellen Mark 1990, 9,5 x 7,5 cm (3 3/4 x 3 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: Robert Mapplethorpe 1979, 11,5 x 9 cm (4 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: Yousuf Karsh, Marshall McLuhan, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto 1974, 33 x 25 cm (13 x 10 1/4 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: Marina Abramović & Ulay 1990, 72 x 56 cm (28 x 22 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: Peter Beard 1987, 70,5 x 55 cm (27 3/4 x 22 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: Lucien Clergue, Le Cerf Volant, Bretagne 1984, 42 x 40 cm (16 3/4 x 16 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: William Wegman 1987, 76 x 55 cm (30 x 22 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: Oliviero Toscani, Andy Warhol 1975, 7,5 x 9,5 cm (3 x 3 3/4 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*above: Sally Mann, Composition II 1985, 64 x 56 cm (25 1/4 x 22 in.) /WestLicht Collection

*above: Ansel Adams, Yosemite Falls & Flowers 1979, 8 x 8 cm (3 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.) / WestLicht Collection

*All images courtesy of the WestLicht Museum.

The Everglades hold a very special place in Brooklyn-based photographer Lisa Elmaleh‘s heart. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Elmaleh documents the area’s flora and fauna, hoping to both honor and call attention to the rapidly-diminishing ecosystem. She uses a large format 8×10″ camera (named Fitzgerald Fitzwilliam Fitzgeorge) and the wet collodion process, a nineteenth century process requiring images be exposed and developed on site. The process reveals the passage of time, a quality Elmaleh says is essential to her work. (She also uses the trunk of her 1996 Toyota Tercel as a darkroom.)

Images from Elmaleh’s Everglades series are currently on view as part of 4 on the Verge, a group show at Brooklyn’s 440 Gallery, which runs through April 3rd.

Describing her subject, Elmaleh says:

“The Everglades is the only ecological system of its kind. In the dedication of Everglades National Park, president Harry S. Truman stated, ‘Here are no lofty peaks seeking the sky, no mighty glaciers or rushing streams wearing away the uplifted land. Here is land… serving not as the source of water but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes the place from all others in our country.’

“To date, more than half of the Everglades have been repurposed for urban and agricultural use. ‘Freshwater flowing into the park is engineered,’ reads the brochure given to all visitors of Everglades National Park. ‘With the help of pumps, floodgates, and retention ponds along the park’s boundary, the Everglades is presently on life support, alive but diminished.’ I hope to preserve an essence of the Everglades, a land we are rapidly losing without knowing the magnitude of our loss.”

*above: Mangrove, Coot Bay Pond. 2010.

*above: Palm in Sawgrass. 2010.

*above: Alligator Grass. 2009.

*above: Water Trail. 2010.

*above: Mangrove Roots. 2010.

*above: Slash Pines. 2010.

*All images: gelatin silver print from collodion on glass negative, and courtesy of the artist

Yusuke Nishimura‘s exquisite Dayscapes series explores shifting light and color temperatures throughout a given day. Nishimura sets up a piece of paper by a window right as the sun comes up, takes a picture on transparency, and patiently waits til the color of daylight changes. Then he takes another picture, and another, and continues the process until the sun goes down. The result is a beautiful series of monochromatic transparencies.

Describing his work, the Okayama, Japan-born, New York-based photographer says:

“Depending on the season, the weather, and time of day, the sun emits different colors of light due to the refraction and the distance from the sun to the earth. Each day’s gradual shift in the color temperature is subtle yet unique…I start by scanning the transparencies of the daylight color. I compose a 40 x 30 image on a blank file whose vertical axis represents the entire time from sunrise to sunset during the day. I layer each monochromatic image on top of one another, and apply a gradation mask so that each image gradually appears and becomes 100% visible at the corresponding time when it was captured. Oddly, the resulting image looks as if it is a painting, although the way I compose an image is different to that of a painter. The colors I apply to my work are obtained photographically, so they are indexical to the time they are observed.”

*above: 07:29:47, 07:50:03, 08:05:11, 10:19:37, 14:11:45, 16:42:12, 1/16/08, Brooklyn

*above: 07:24:32, 07:41:07, 08:18:01, 09:13:47, 09:45:42, 13:33:19, 14:42:59, 17:55:57, 18:36:22, 18:52:56, 3/17/08, Long Island City

*above: 05:31:32, 05:46:51, 06:19:30, 06:46:10, 06:59:56, 14:44:11, 16:52:01, 17:03:51, 17:25:18, 18:30:23, 18:46:58, 19:18:38, 19:23:33, 19:34:48, 19:46:16, 5/22/08, Williams Town

*above: 08:02:55, 09:03:11, 09:59:59, 10:07:44, 11:21:59, 12:13:05, 14:32:03, 16:51:04, 17:25:34, 17:43:00 , 17:49:01, 10/22/07, Jackson Heights

To see more of Nishimura’s work, visit yusukenishimura.com.

*Images courtesy of the artist.

Sunburn, an ongoing series by San Francisco-based photographer Chris McCaw, is the haunting and beautiful result of sunlight literally scorching a negative. The series offers a nod to the art form’s historical roots, and an immediate sense of antiquity, while, at the same time, seemingly honoring the power of the sun on the modern world around us.

McCaw describes Sunburn‘s origins this way:

“In 2003 an all night exposure of the stars made during a camping trip was lost due to the effects of whiskey. Unable to wake up to close the shutter before sunrise, all the information of the night’s exposure was destroyed. The intense light of the rising sun was so focused and powerful that it physically changed the film, creating a new way for me to think about photography.

*above: Sunburned GSP#400(Pacific Ocean), 2009. 4-8″x10″ unique gelatin silver paper negatives.
private collection

“In this process the sun burns its path onto the light sensitive negative. After hours of exposure, the sky, as a result of the extremely intense light exposure, reacts in an effect called solarization- a natural reversal of tonality through over exposure. The resulting negative literally has a burnt hole in it with the landscape in complete reversal. The subject of the photograph (the sun) has transcended the idea that a photograph is simple a representation of reality, and has physically come through the lens and put its hand onto the final piece. This is a process of creation and destruction, all happening within the the camera.

“In the beginning, after that first experience in 2003, I began experimenting with burning film and printing the resulting burnt negative in the platinum palladium process. The results were very interesting yet very confusing. The film negative has solarized into a positive and I then printed that into a final print with a negative image, and a generation loss of the burn.”

The series continues to evolve, as McCaw experiments with varying combinations of exposure, negative, subject and process. For those interested in seeing the Sunburn effect face to face, the artist’s work is currently featured in a group exhibition (along with company such as Richard Misrach, Zoe Crosher, Dru Donovan, and others) called “CALIFORNIA CONTINUED: New Approaches in West Coast Photography,” through April 15th at California’s Smith Anderson North, as well as in the V&A’s “Something That I’ll Never Really See” at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Jaipur House, India Gate, until April 10.

McCaw’s also gearing up for a second solo exhibition at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco, slated for the fall, and is currently working on a custom-made Cirkut style camera that will help him capture 24 hours of daylight in a 360 degree panorama at the Arctic Circle in June.

For more information, visit chrismccaw.com.

*All images courtesy of the artist.

New York’s Bruce Silverstein Gallery presents Shinichi Maruyama: Gardens. For his latest project, Maruyama has created a conceptual series of twelve images inspired by the mental and physical endurance necessary to create a Japanese Zen garden. Drawing a line between himself and the monks who maintain Zen gardens in Japan, Maruyama has created surreal compositions by repeatedly throwing tempera paint into the air and then photographing and combining the frozen moments for beautifully balanced, otherworldly and physically powerful images (see below).

According to the artist: “It is said that a Zen garden represents in a three dimensional space the spirits of high priests who have achieved enlightenment. The Zen garden is the expression of boundless cosmic beauty in a physical environment, created through intense human concentration, labor and repeated action.”

Maruyama was born in Nagano Japan, and has lived and worked in New York since 2003.

Gardens runs through April 2 at Bruce Silverstein Gallery:
535 W. 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

above: Garden #3

above: Garden #8

above: Garden #12

above: Garden #1

above: Garden #6

*images courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery

Now showing at New York’s HASTED KRAEUTLER Gallery: Albert Watson.

Hasted Kraeutler presents famed photographer Albert Watson‘s first major gallery exhibition in the United States. Spanning nearly forty years of Watson’s career, the show is expansive, covering everything from HItchcock with Goose, (according to Watson, “the first famous person that I shot…”) to the surreal images from Watson’s Vegas series.

As James Crump wrote in Albert Watson (Phaidon, 2007), “although Watson’s subjects may seem disparate at first, on closer inspection they plot an artistic trajectory held tightly together by a thread of perfectionism, casting objects, bodies, fashion into finely honed symbols of desire, ennui and dreamlike immersion.”

Albert Watson has created an exclusive edition of Platinum prints of some of his most iconic photographs (including Hitchcock with Goose, 1973, Christy Turlington, 1990, and Kate Moss (back), Marrakesh, Morocco, 1993), especially for this exhibition. The exhibition also coincides with the release of two new limited-edition books and archival pigment prints of 500 copies, Strip Search: Las Vegas and UFO: Unified Fashion Objectives (PQ Blackwell in association with Abrams, 2010).

Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, Albert Watson studied film and television at the Royal College of Art in London before he moved to the U.S. to launch a career in photography in 1970. Last year, readers of Photo District News named Albert Watson one of the twenty most influential photographers, demonstrating that he is a “photographer’s photographer,” and has had a huge impact on his peers and photographers of future generations. Watson has received many honors, including a Lucie Award for lifetime achievement in photography, a Grammy Award for the cover of the Mason Profitt album, Come and Gone (1975), and three ANDY Awards for creativity in advertising. On September 9, 2010, the Royal Photographic Society awarded Albert Watson their Centenary Medal, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the art and science of photography.

The exhibition runs through December 4th at:
Hasted Kraeutler
537 West 24th Street,
New York, NY 10011
hastedkraeutler.com

above: Alan Shepard’s Lunar Suit, Apollo 14, NASA, 1990. Chromogenic print. 96 x 72 inches. Edition of 5. Courtesy Albert Watson/ Hasted Kraeutler.

above: Alfred Hitchcock, Los Angeles, 1973. Platinum print. 30 x 22 inches. Edition of 3. Courtesy Albert Watson/ Hasted Kraeutler.

above: Monkey with Gun, New York City, 1992. Platinum print. 30 x 22 inches. Edition of 3. Courtesy Albert Watson/ Hasted Kraeutler.

above: Mick Jagger, Los Angeles, 1992. Chromogenic print. 96 x 72 inches. Edition of 5. Courtesy Albert Watson/ Hasted Kraeutler.

above: Road to Nowhere, Las Vegas, 2001. Chromogenic print. 70 x 112 inches. Edition of 5. Courtesy Albert Watson/ Hasted Kraeutler.

Five years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, a powerful new Aperture book – photographer Richard Misrach‘s Destroy This Memory- explores the post-Katrina world, considering the storm’s
psychological and physical impact on the city and its people.

Shot on Misrach’s 4 MP pocket camera between October and December 2005, Destroy This Memory focuses specifically on disaster-inspired graffiti. Sometimes desperate, other times ironic, but always very, very raw, these messages – made in spraypaint, chalk, and whatever other materials lay around at the time – drive home citizens’ very real perspectives in the wake of Katrina.

All artist royalties for the project are being donated to the Make It Right Foundation, which is currently rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

Destroy This Memory
by Richard Misrach
140 pages pages, 70 four-color images
Published by Aperture
Available for purchase here.