(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: ALL OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS, BELOW, ARE COPYRIGHT JENNIFER TRAUSCH AND ARE NOT TO BE REPRODUCED ANYWHERE, IN ANY FORM WHATSOEVER, WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER)
THE BIG POLAROID GOES DOCU-STYLE
SEE MORE OF JENNIFER TRAUSCH’S DRAMATIC 20X24 B&W WORK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE, FOLLOWING THE END OF THE ARTICLE, BELOW.
By Eric Rudolph
As manager of New York City's venerable 20x24 Polaroid studio,
Jennifer Trausch facilitates mega-large-format sessions for photography legends like Mary Ellen Mark, William Wegman, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Lyle Ashton Harris, Julian Schnabel, David Levinthal and many others.
This is truly large-format photography. No puny 4x5 or 8x10 originals here: 20x24 Polaroid instant prints are, as advertised, fully 20x24 inches in size.
The popular and unique studio is often booked solid, in advance, for months on end.
THE 20X24 UNBOUND
However, Trausch thought it was long past time that the big Polaroid saw use in an uncontrolled setting (an approach for which it was definitely not designed).
So when a week's worth of 20x24 bookings were suddenly cancelled, Trausch loaded the 250 lb., five-foot-tall camera into a big truck and headed south the very next day, to begin her long-gestating and highly unusual black-and-white project.
Greenfield-Sanders has described the 20x24 as "a cross between a Volkswagen and an armoire." There are only five other (official) 20x24 Polaroid cameras worldwide, and one of these is a museum piece. The normal lens for the 20x24 is 720mm. It typically uses 10,000 watt-seconds of strobe power or more in the studio, its usual working environment.
So there is a refreshing sense of rebellion in the way that Trausch works (on this ongoing project). It's more than just defiance of the restrictions imposed on the photographer because of the camera’s unwieldy size; it's a curiosity to see (and prove) what the 20x24 can do when set free.
USING A BIG CAMERA LIKE A SMALLER CAMERA
She’s using the big camera much like one might use a Hasselblad; shooting mostly unplanned documentary-style portrait sessions with real people, in real-life locations, and with available light only.
However, simply taking the camera out of the studio is nothing new. William Wegman, Julian Schnabel and others do it often. What is truly different about Trausch's work is that she is using the 20x24 as if it were a much smaller camera, shooting her subjects casually instead of in the studied way of much large format work.
Fortunately, she's adept enough with the 20x24 (after years of 60-hour weeks at the studio) to use it more or less like her regular camera (an 8 x 10 fitted with a Polaroid back).
Trausch acknowledges that the 20x24, "wasn't made for this type of shooting, it is a handmade oversized object, a studio camera for a controlled setting. It is temperamental, and affected by humidity, temperature; by sunlight endlessly leaking in, bumpy truck rides.”
Uncontrolled environments can accentuate these normal problems. For example, transporting the camera over rough roads can cause the motor (which pulls the giant neg/pos film sandwiches through the rollers) to malfunction, creating images that aren’t the full size; shooting at extreme angles can cause the chemistry to land unevenly and start the image development oddly.
A CAMERA WITH A PERSONALITY
"The camera has much more of a personality than most cameras. And I like this imperfect way of working," Trausch adds.
She’s one of the few people in the world who is experienced enough to expand the big camera’s horizons, and do it with relative ease. "My familiarity with the film and the nature of this machine means I'm one of few people not constrained by its mass, the sheer physicality of shooting with it, its cumbersome and awkward nature in the field. I can shoot with it loosely, and get back to feeling and finding the moment.
"Large format requires a lot more control. The subjects are often set up for the camera. This can create static work, or work that feels somewhat contrived. My reaction was to work against what I knew. I was less interested in these typical formal qualities of large format. I wanted to shoot freely, just me and the camera and my subject. I shoot wide open, the fall off of focus was just as important as the focus itself."
Although her long weeks on the job in the 20x24 studio made operating the finicky camera second nature to Trausch, they didn't exactly make her eager to shoot with it during her scant off hours.
AN END TO 20X24” FILM?
However, the great uncertainty as to how much longer the gigantic film for the 20x24 will be manufactured proved a powerful impetus to Trausch's project. There is hope that (one way or another) film will be made for years to come, but this is far from certain. (In February 2008 Polaroid announced that it is indeed exiting all aspects of film manufacturing; they are willing to license the right to make Polaroid film. No such licensing deals have yet been made, however.)
Talk about motivation.
As for film choice, black-and-white was not primarily an aesthetic decision; the majority of Trausch's past work is color. However, B&W was in line with how Trausch envisioned the images in this project. B&W also proved to be a technical necessity.
B&W MAKES THE PROJECT POSSIBLE
The 400 ISO B&W film afforded Trausch a two-stop speed gain over the 100 ISO color stock, a tremendous advantage for a project using only available light. (She initially brought strobes along but found that lights changed the dynamic between her and the subjects, and quickly decided to work with available light only.)
To work in available light with a lens of f11 maximum aperture and significant bellows factors (the extension of the bellows reduces light transmission to the film, necessitating even longer exposures) would have been simply impractical with 100 ISO, the fastest color 20x24 stock. (The issues of working in color, with the variety of color temperatures encountered with available light, was also a factor.)
Still, her exposures were nerve-wrackingly long: from 1 to 25 seconds.
GOOD BLUR
Trausch has embraced the fact that these long exposures sometimes created images with (subject) motion blur. However, she is enthusiastic about these softer, blurred images; she sees this as a "more nuanced and painterly look." She is enthusiastically exploring the possibilities of this look, which is quite different from the conventional super-sharp strobe-lit style of much of the work produced by the big camera.
Trausch also utilizes the novelty of the huge camera to ease her integration into often-suspicious small town communities down South. The giant camera’s unique and somewhat sensational nature "helps me get through the process of being an outsider more quickly, and actively become a part of the community," she explains.
The extremely atypical camera itself is a part of her work. "The camera is a curiosity, and also a tangible process that involves both my subjects and myself. The events I photograph are based on reality, but often change during the shoot, so new realities are created. The instant part makes it accessible to everyone; a performance of sorts takes place for the camera."
The Nitty-Gritty Details
"I travel with one assistant, Kim Venable, in a 16 ft. lift-gate truck, this way we can bring the camera in and out fairly easily. The truck is a workstation, mainly in that we use the inside walls to hang the prints to dry (in the humidity of the South the prints can often take anywhere from three hours to all night to dry.) We travel light, mainly lenses and some grip gear, some lights as backup (that we basically never use), and lots of materials to protect the camera from the elements: tents and tarps for the rain and large black cloths to wrap around the camera in the sun (to control light leaks).
The exigencies include: the usual physical issues such as bug bites, sunburn, pulled muscles and bruises. Also the truck and camera breaking down repeatedly, an overall disdain for Northerners, and horrible weather (hurricane rain on the first trip lead us indoors into general stores and diners, guiding the very fate of the project.)” -- Jennifer Trausch