Pull XL
Artist
Ellen Carey
(b. 1952)
Date2004
MediumPolaroid, one color positive and one negative print
Dimensions40 × 80 in. (101.6 × 203.2 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineJane and Victor Darnell Fund
Object number2021.6
DescriptionThroughout her career, Ellen Carey has experimented in the field of abstract photography, defying photographic conventions of representing identifiable subjects. Among her most important series, Carey's "Pulls" demonstrate the artists's interest in color, light, and photographic process as the subject of her work.To produce her "Pulls," Carey creates large, abstract photographs using a 20 x 24 inch Polaroid camera. Photographing a blank white surface onto which light is projected through color filters, the artist pulls the exposed paper through the camera, bursting pods of colored dyes that transalte the filtered light into streaks of corresponding color. Shown alongisde the color "Pulls" are the negatives that are peeled away from their positive counterparts. Together, the pulls and their negatives become documents of a performance, recording the physical act of making a photograph. Using light itself as subject, the series reflects how a photograph is made. Carey's experimental practice simultaneously points to the photograph's materiality as light-sensitive paper while dissolving the medium into a representation of pure process and color.
These Polaroid 40 X 80 Color Positive and Negatives are one set; they were made at the studio of Gregory Colbert as he purchased the monumental 40 x 80 Museum Camera in 2000, from Polaroid, relocating it to New York (Lower East Side) renaming it “Moby C”.
Upon notification of her upcoming MATRIX solo exhibition, Ellen Carey schedule a day-long session in August, the summer of 2004; she made eight (8) Polaroid Pulls XL.
The Polaroid film known as color P3 pod, (i.e. the pod are Polaroid developing dyes) was used, hence the negative is darker greenish brown ground as opposed to P7 film/pods, which has a golden brown. The whitish “flare” at the top of the image, again, is an inter-vention that is purposely used by Carey; it upends traditional studio lighting, this ordinary available light, exposes the negative ahead of time, in this case, partially. Then the nega-tive is re-rolled into the camera, then “pulled” through for the length of the film, and in this case, with no exposure, the “zero” in Carey’s practice Photography Degree Zero.
The monochrome palette of non-color-as-color references the study of that theme in the visual arts, as well as referencing the 19th century vintage works of early practitioners, most notably William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), the British inventor of paper pho-tography through his paper imaging process of negative-to-positive, named photogram (1834) later contact printed for its positive (1840). Talbot’s palette is of earthy browns.
By using the Polaroid process, its instant peel-a-way technology, and the “pod” chemistry with its negative-to-positive film, Carey re-arranges expectations, developing an image, a unique large format 40 X 80 rectangle that she “pulls” through the camera’s rollers for an elongated shape, the conical loop, also her discovery, developing it in a mere 60 seconds.
On View
On view
