Photo-Transformation
Lucas Samaras American, born Greece
Not on view
Samaras was already well known as a sculptor, painter, and performance artist when he began experimenting with photography in 1969. Working with a Polaroid camera, he created hundreds of lush, idiosyncratic images of his favorite subject: himself. In his Photo-Transformations series of 1973-76, Samaras extended the formal possibilities of the Polaroid by using his hand or a stylus to gouge, smear, and stipple the wet dye emulsions of the instant prints while they were developing. Here, the artist seems to dissolve into a watery reflection while his fist threatens to punch through the picture plane into the viewer's space.
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