Miles Aldridge - Please Return Polaroids

With this volume, Miles Aldridge revisits his Polaroid archive of 20 highly prolific years of magazine assignments. Lots of those old Polaroids were intentionally or accidentally damaged while working on different stories--trimming, adjusting, marking, cutting, pasting, outlining specific details in order for them to be enhanced, modified, reassembled or discarded. Liberated from their original context, the images take on a life of their own and adapt an almost dreamlike and very effectual character. By partly enlarging and arranging the Polaroids in unexpected ways, Aldridge treats them as singular images that command individual respect. Here, we get a rare insight into a photographer’s storyboard and workflow while learning to appreciate the importance of flaws and imperfections, but also of the playfulness that happens along the way to the finished photograph.