Marking her 20th year of experimentation with the one step, peel apart Polaroid process, Ellen Carey has recently begun working with the Polaroid 40 x 80—the world's largest instant camera. Polaroid photography has become synonymous with innovation and creativity in the field of contemporary art, attracting such influential artists as Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and William Wegman. Carey, however, has pushed its technology beyond the limits of usage that its inventor, Dr. Edwin Land, could have dreamed.

First of all, she liberated the photograph from its representational moorings with the radical elimination of subject matter before the camera lens. In Carey's hands, the camera records only light—and its absence—in a neutral environment. In a practice governed by chance, she has refined her experimental "pull" technique to include "rollbacks" of film within the camera; "flares," in which the film is under-exposed; creating images in the absence of light; and the occasional addition of black-and-white developing fluid to color film dyes. Unlike other photographers working with Polaroid technology, Carey retains the instant film negatives, regarding these as unique works of art as well.

© Ellen Carey