Analog Forever Magazine is pleased to showcase 16 images in this month’s online exhibition, entitled “In An Instant”. Curated by Polaroid Fanatic and Founder of Analog Forever Magazine, Michael Behlen, these instant photographs capture the magical and experimental nature of the medium we all love. Created by photographers from around the globe in both traditional and unconventional ways, they make you wonder what you are missing out on by not shooting Polaroids yourself.

Michael Behlen writes: If you know anything about me, you know I am a Polaroid addict. New film, old film, expired film, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s instant. The images I selected for this month’s exhibition “In An Instant” capture the aspects of the medium that I love the most: vibrant colors, tone shifts from temperature variations, and flames, and happy accidents from expired film stock. There is something magical about the temperamental nature of using these film types when they are used by imaginative and creative artists who know how to make the best of the unexpected.

My final selections of this exhibition show just that and were quite easy to pick out of the 150+ submissions I received. The artists’ images below easily transformed ordinary moments of watching their loved one dressing in the window light, the view from the top of a mountain hike, and even the tender relationship between mother and child can be turned into emotive cerebral narrations just by adopting this unpredictable film type. This is why we shoot instant film! It’s not because we are after the perfect image or the best exposure possible; but, because we are after something deeper than the final image. Artists’ emotions are reconstructed into instant keepsakes that allow us to hold on to them forever.

As for my “favorite image”, it wasn’t an easy pick. However, I keep coming back to Thomas Zamolo’s “Untitled”, captured on a She-Hao 8x10 camera and expired Polaroid Type 809 film. The green color shifts of expired pack film bend our memories into thinking we are staring at a long lost nephew or grandson. The sense of innocent awe embodied by the young man in the image reminds me that exploration of the world around us, even if it’s in the corners of our own home, is worth running after. Perhaps if we looked closer into our immediate surroundings and dove deeper into the places we pass by without notice we would be more calm, centered, and appreciative. Ultimately, the image resonates with me because it represents the things I, and maybe our viewers, have lost: a sense of awe about the world we live in.

- Michael Behlen

Gallery 

About the Curator

Michael Behlen is an instant film addict and the founder and publisher of Analog Forever Magazine. For the last 6 years, Behlen has become an obsessive community organizer in the film photography world, including launching the independent publishing projects PRYME Magazine and PRYME Editions, two enterprises dedicated to the art of instant film. Through these endeavors, he has featured and published 200+ artists from around the globe via his print and online publications.

He has self-published two Polaroid photobooks-“Searching for Stillness, Vol. 1” and “I Was a Pioneer,” literally a boxed set of his instant film work. His latest book, Searching for Stillness Vol II was published in 2020 by Static Age. He has been published, been interviewed, and been reviewed in a quantity of magazines and online publications, from F-Stop and Blur Magazine to the Analog Talk Podcast. He loves the magic sensuality of instant film: its saturated, surreal colors; the unpredictability of the medium; it’s addictive qualities as you watch it develop. He spends his time shooting instant film and backpacking in the California wilderness, usually a combination of the two.

Connect with Michael Behlen on his Website and on Instagram!