William Miller
Artist Statement
These pictures are taken with a camera that is, by most definitions, broken – an old Polaroid SX-70 camera that I rescued from a yard sale last year. With its first use I realised the camera wasn’t functioning properly. It sometimes spills out two pictures at a time and the film often gets stuck in the gears, exposing and mangling them in unpredictable ways. In a way this is not a unique event.
Anyone who has ever worked with Polaroid has had a similar experience. I figure about five per cent of all polaroids fail for one reason or another. We all tend to throw them out. They’re a statistical anomaly of such a complicated technology. My slightly broken SX-70 camera inverted the statistics. I was getting ruined pictures almost all the time.
William Miller Interview on It’s Nice That
William: Oh, these are all lovely! Did you do any further manipulation of the surfaces of the prints? It looks as though you may have applied pressure to the plastic protective coating on some of the prints.
Thank you,
Richard Fox
These are stunning! I love that you saw the beauty in the “mistakes.”