Instant Exposure: The Physical Print attempts to demonstrate the power of the Polaroid as a unique, physical object; this, as opposed to a digital nonphysical screen image. Using a wide selection of his Polaroids, Cyrus Mahboubian challenges audiences with the idea of the digital revolution and its impact upon traditional, dated photography.
The Polaroid is a unique medium; it is a physical photograph that can be held in our hands without the possibility of repetition or duplication. It is something sentimental that maintains a meaning and a history - something which struggles to be found in digital photographs. It exists as both an object and a memory, functioning as a physical recollection mutually for its photographer and its audience. The vast majority of digital photographs will never exist in physical form, it is precisely this circumstance that the Polaroid and Instant Exposure: The Physical Print, theoretically and physically contradicts.
Through contemporary curatorial practice and instantaneous imagery, this exhibition presents a series of quality Polaroids that display the skill and technique essential to the art of Polaroid. To be simultaneously admired as individuals and as a collection, these Polaroids reside next to one another mirroring themselves with three larger scale print Polaroids. These large scale prints become objects in themselves through their permanent mounting upon aluminium and their nature as singular editions.
A projection screen above the space presents rapid screen imagery of Polaroids sent in by members of the public who also share a passion for the medium. This element of the exhibition intends to reinforce the divide between the physical and the immaterial, exhibiting both subjects in juxtaposition within the space. By experiencing the physical print and the digital hyperphysical image in one space, a realisation should impose which emphasises the importance of the object in contemporary photography and in contemporary culture and society.