Seen: Polaroid Girls
Who: Akira Gomi
Where: Super Labo Store Tokyo
When: November 22, 2019 – January 12, 2020 (Open 1-7pm, Closed Mondays)
Akira Gomi is a photographer with a long commercial career that has focused on bare human beauty- the operative word is “bare”- the photos above aren’t representative of the full content in the show. It’s funny how what was acceptable in the 90′s would get deleted by contemporary moralizing scolds/ profit-oriented algorithms in a flash. The photos of late 90s “loose sock” culture however, would stay.
The images in the show are almost all original 4x5 & 8x10 Polaroid pictures shot in the late 80s and into the 90s for various magazine features and his photobook series Yellows. The silver gelatin & color C-prints were printed with negatives made from Polaroid film.
I have to admit- I’d never had a proper look at a good Polaroid 8x10 before. I now firmly ( grimly ) believe that photography as a whole- or as an object- took a severe blow when this film went out of production. Well, as for the exhibition itself I especially enjoyed how the photographs are presented- notes for magazine publishers are left in the margins and the fading and “mishaps” inherent in the process are celebrated.
A prolific photographer, there are boxes of his original Polaroid 8x10&4x5 photos in the gallery available for a mere ¥3000 &¥1000 yen, each.