Repetition and Reproduction

Series of 9 Polaroid photographs
Winner of the 3rd Polaroid International Photography Awards Contest (Category Africa/Europe)
2002

To have a polaroid-picture twice all the same, you have to take another photo, recreating a situation as similar as possible to the first one and try to shoot the photo in the same way. Therefor I aimed to focus on the very little changes of the new moment, in the motive itself, the color differences (due to the developing process), the surroundings and the light situation, which are only noticeable the second time you look at it.

I tried to use a special type of images, which in our visual perception are immediately recognized as moments of motion. So I chose typical patterns of something "passing by", like the dive into the water, the predator cat going to and fro in the zoo or the landscape moving past seen through the car window. Each photo was taken with exactly the same position and camera, and in each photo there is a part of motion-blur making it obvious to the viewer, that all situations really had to happen several times in order to shoot each unique photo.

Deutsche Version
Margit Nobis