Transforming the Nature of Instant Photography

Twenty-four years ago, Lucas Samaras began a series of self-portrait Polaroids that to my mind rank among the most astonishing photographs made by a contemporary artist, and among the most astonishing self-portraits by an artist of any era.

The New York-based sculptor, painter, assemblagist and performer has worn many hats in his long and productive career. But in a powerfully compelling way, Samaras as photographer most clearly shows how being an artist means transforming banality into preternatural magic.

Thirty-nine of Samaras’ self-portrait photographs have just gone on view at PaceWildenstein Gallery in Beverly Hills, and together they offer one of the more bracingly satisfying shows of the summer season. According to the gallery, most of the pictures have not been publicly exhibited before, making this an exhibition not to miss.

Dubbed “photo-transformations,” the pictures were made between 1973 and 1976. Individual examples vary in accomplishment, but by no means is this a show of also-rans or leftovers from a celebrated moment in the artist’s career. Instead, several among them are as fine as any photographs Samaras has made.

The Polaroids were crafted using an SX-70 camera and a kind of instantly developing film no longer commercially available. The film was composed of a thin “chemical sandwich” that, when exposed to light, began to develop in bright, jewel-like colors.

There was one big drawback to the film. Touching the surface before it had set could cause the chemical layers to bleed into one another and the image to distort and become misshapen--much to the dismay of the average Polaroid user.

But not to Samaras, who turned that commercial disadvantage into extraordinary artistic profit. After taking a picture, he used straight pins, rubber erasers and other simple tools to “draw” into the slowly developing surface. The photographed image functioned something like a preparatory sketch, the starting point for elaborate, sometimes virtuoso manipulations.

To complicate matters even further, Samaras often began with an image that already verged on the extravagant.

All of these photographs were taken inside the artist’s rather cramped Manhattan apartment (the narrow, linoleum-floored kitchen seems to have been a favorite site). Then, Samaras would tack up floral or plaid fabric as a space-bending background, perhaps insert mirrors to double and reflect portions of the subject, illuminate the scene with a rainbow of brightly colored lights or maybe use a slide projector to layer the surface with another shadowy image.

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In this way he created surprising visual conundrums that were the ground for still further manipulation, improvised on the spot as the photographic chemicals set. These photo-transformations are about as far from so-called straight photography as you can get.

Drawing on the surface could obliterate a whole section of the picture. In one, a single wide eye and two rows of gleaming teeth framed by lurid red gums blare out from an ambiguous gray soup of agitated gestural marks.

In another, an ethereal, elongated nude seems to float in a heavenly galaxy of velvety black, showered with little tulips. Miraculously, the galactic expanse appears to have materialized inside the shabby walls of an urban abode.

Elsewhere the artist’s bearded head rests comfortably on the seat of a simple wooden captain’s chair, while his body, captured in blurry time-lapse exposure, seems to explode around it like a firecracker pinwheel.

In these extraordinary pictures Samaras makes subtle visual reference to historical antecedents. The pictorial conversation offers an affectionate homage to a variety of artists, most with an Expressionist or Symbolist bent.

The grinning teeth and glaring eye amid a torrent of abstract markings recall the face of a “Woman” painting by De Kooning. The attenuated galactic nude suggests the exalted spiritual yearning of a figure by El Greco. And the still, reclining head conveys the almost mystical composure of a serene Brancusi bronze.

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These works are also underlined by a salutary claustrophobia. The powerful sense of restricted, almost airless confinement chiefly comes from two sources.

One source is pictured: the physical interior of the small urban apartment in which the photographs were shot. The other is material: the tiny scale of the Polaroid photographs themselves, which, at just three inches square, are physically compressed, requiring close-up, one-on-one scrutiny.

That itchy claustrophobia resounds against these pictures’ liberating, boundlessly expansive imagination. As happens with a great Joseph Cornell box, worlds open up within worlds.

One of the wonderful things about Samaras’ photo-transformations is that you always see the sheer banality of his source materials: the ordinary kitchen with its checkerboard floor, the common household props, the simple camera technology. Samaras never hides any of it.

Instead, even when the final picture is a puzzlement, making you wonder at the mysterious means by which he achieved certain effects, you nevertheless glimpse the mundane through all the dazzling layers. There’s something moving in that, and something hopeful too.

* PaceWildenstein Gallery, 9540 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 205-5522, through Sept. 20.