MY POLAROID SELFIES BOOK I 1981Copy Review Melinda Camber Porter in Paris apartment, 27 Quai Voltaire, 1981. This photo appears within the original Selfie diary on page 40. Review Copy Melinda Camber Porter’s original Selfie diary, kept in a three-ring photo binder. Copy Polaroid SX-70 camera, built from 1972 to 1977, used by Melinda Camber Porter in the creation of the selfies diary. Review The Polaroid SX-70 was the first foldable model by Polaroid, seen here in its compact form. Review Copy Melinda Camber Porter ARCHIVE OF CREATIVE WORKS Volume 2, Number 8 MY POLAROIDCopy SELFIES BOOK I 1981 BY M ELINDA C AMBER P O RT E R Review Blake Press Published by Blake Press © 2017 Blake Press © 2017 Melinda Camber Porter Archive Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937246 Camber Porter, Melinda My Polaroid Selfies Book 1 1981 Camber Porter, Melinda Photography, Polaroid Selfies ISBN 978-1-942231-58-5 1. Art—Polaroid Selfie Photography. 2. Ascher, Arianna Storm—Foreword, Criticism and Interpretation 3. Camber Porter, Melinda—Polaroid Camera Selfie Photography 1981. 4. Camera—Polaroid SX-70. 5. Diary—Polaroid Selfie Photographs in 1981. 6. Edelson, Michael—Foreword, Criticism and Interpretation. 7. Lomography—Polaroid Selfie Photographs in 1981. 8. Photography—Polaroid Selfies France, UK and USA. 9. Selfies—Polaroid Camera In France, UK and USA. 10. Spiritualism—Phycological and SelfCopy Awareness. Melinda Camber Porter Archive of Creative Works Series in Journalism: Volume 2, Number 8 ISSN: 2379-2450 (Print) ISSN: 2379-3198 (E-Book) ISSN: 2379-321X (Audio) Editor: Joseph R. Flicek All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,Review without the prior written permission of the copyright holders. Photographs in this book have been provided by the owners or custodians of the work. Individual photographer names are provided when available. Every effort has been made to obtain rights from image rights holders. Any information on unlocated rights holders forwarded to Blake Press will be acted upon for future editions. First Printing POD www.MelindaCamberPorter.com Melinda Camber Porter ARCHIVE OF CREATIVE WORKS Copy The Melinda Camber PorterPorter ArchiveArchive ofof CreativeCreative WorksWorks comprisescomprises twotwo series of books. The First Series are books of journalism. The Second Series are books ofof artart andand literature.literature. ForFor thethe complete complete list list of of titles titles in in the the series by Blake Press, see page 146. Review PUBLISHER’S NOTE Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie’. From 1981 to 1983 Melinda Camber Porter took approximately 150 Polaroid Selfies. She placed each of them in chronological order into a three-inch thick, three ringed photo diary. She was obviously fascinated with, and had deep interest in, what ‘Selfies’ showed about her state of mind. Melinda Camber Porter averaged one Polaroid photo selfie per week for three years, 1981–83, creating a ‘photo diary.’ With this new Polaroid camera, Melinda Camber Porter now had the ability to take photos of herself to capture her many different emotional states. She wrote various annotated statements next to some of her Polaroid Selfies, which give us insight. She wrote, “I am depressed,” “I am trying to be happy,” “I am thinking of love” and so forth regardingCopy her state of mind when she took each Polaroid Selfie. Melinda Camber Porter was addressing the classic Mind-Body problem or William Blake’s Body and Soul. Does the face of my body show what I am thinking in my mind when I take the Polaroid photo? She was using the new Polaroid camera technology as laboratory equipment to log her mind’s thoughts as expressed in her face. She understood the photos were important enough to log each Polaroid Selfie in chronological order over three years from 1981–83. She knew they provided her with some type of insight into her life and emotions and wanted to keep them in diary form. Michael Edelson, ProfessorReview Emeritus of Film and Photography at State University of New York at Stony Brook, provides an insightful foreword into this diary of Melinda Camber Porter’s Polaroid Selfies, and the inventiveness of Edwin H. Land, the inventor of, and driving force behind, the Polaroid camera. Edwin Land had over 500 patents on his Polaroid camera. Professor Edelson compares Edwin Land’s introduction of the Polaroid camera with the excitement of Steve Jobs’ introduction of the iPhone, both major technological advances. viii | PUBLISHER’S NOTE Michael Edelson describes the scene of Edwin Land secretly entering a science laboratory at Columbia University at night, through a window, to continue his experiments developing polarizing iodide-quinine crystals, needed for Polaroid film, and the key in digital photography today. It was an art student at Columbia University, Terre (Helen Maislen) who guided Land up the fire escape to the secret window, which led to the engineering laboratory with the 10,000 gauss electromagnet necessary for polarizing iodide-quinine crystals. (The full story is found in Land’s Polaroid by Peter C. Wensberg.) Columbia University laboratories have often been the scene of technological breakthroughs. FM radio technology developed in Columbia University’s engineering laboratories by Edwin Howard Armstrong, who is remembered today with an annual guest lecturer. Voice and Video- over-IP (known commercially and most commonly, as Skype) was developed, in part, at Columbia University’s engineering laboratories using software and hardware (a Texas Instrument’s TMS 23 chip in an analog phone) by Dr. Henning Schulzrinne. Artists take new technology advances forward to new creative places for the human experience. Melinda Camber Porter took her newly purchased Polaroid camera in 1981 and began a three- year journey of photographing herself and placing theCopy yet unnamed ‘selfie’ photos into her ‘photo diary.’ This ‘photo diary’ allowed Melinda Camber Porter to search privately for her Body and Soul both photographically and instantly. As Edwin Land said, “business should be at the intersection of art and science.” Michael Edelson compares Melinda Camber Porter’s efforts of the selfie photo diary to William Blake’s printing of his images and poetry in search of Body and Soul. In the second foreword to this title, Storm Ascher, a Millennial artist and photographer based in Los Angeles and New York, states: “The self-portrait is the most dominate use of the camera today… Melinda Camber Porter had an ability to transcend the element of time in all of her work; representingReview images and writing about personal experiences that could ultimately be an overall expression of the human experience. She understood this phenomenon of documenting the ‘self ’ before it was coined the “selfie” by the Millennial generation.” The 150 Polaroid selfies will be published in three separate books over three years. In this first book, My Polaroid Selfies: Book I 1981 (V2N9), are found the first forty-eight Polaroid selfies taken by Melinda Camber Porter in 1981 and placed in her photo diary. PUBLISHER’S NOTE | ix Review Copy TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Plates xii 90-Year Timeline of Polaroid Corporation xvi Foreword by Michael Edelson xix Polaroid’s Return to the ‘Selfie’ Generation xxxiii by Storm Ascher POLAROID PLATES Copy1–127 The Melinda Camber Porter Archive About 131 Art 133 Literature 136 Film Review 138 Journalism 139 Praise 142 More Information 145 Melinda Camber Porter Archive Catalog Listing 146 TABLE OF CONTENTS | xi LIST OF PLATES All plates are 3.5 x 4.2 inches Polaroid Selfie No. 7 Polaroid Selfie No. 1 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 07422113434 14319115047 POLAROID 9 POLAROID 6 p. 17 p. 3 Polaroid Selfie No. 8 Polaroid Selfie No. 2 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 16309909269 14319115047 POLAROID 9 POLAROID 6 p. 19 p. 5 Polaroid Selfie No. 9 Polaroid Selfie No. 3 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 11307222486 04421310212 POLAROIDCopy 9 POLAROID 9 p. 23 p. 7 Polaroid Selfie No. 10 Polaroid Selfie No. 4 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 16309309269 14319115047 POLAROID 9 POLAROID 6 p. 25 p. 9 Polaroid Selfie No. 11 Polaroid Selfie No. 5 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 6214313375 16309309269 POLAROID _ POLAROID 9 p. 27 p. 13 Review Polaroid Selfie No. 12 Polaroid Selfie No. 6 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 6214313375 16309309269 POLAROID _ POLAROID 9 p. 29 p. 15 xii | LIST OF PLATES LIST OF PLATES Polaroid Selfie No. 13 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Polaroid Selfie No. 19 6214313375 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 POLAROID _ 6214313373 p. 33 POLAROID _ p.49 Polaroid Selfie No. 14 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Polaroid Selfie No. 20 6214313375 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 POLAROID _ 6314313373 p. 35 POLAROID 6 p. 51 Polaroid Selfie No. 15 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Polaroid Selfie No. 21 6214313375 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 POLAROID _ 6217313373 p. 37 POLAROIDCopy _ p. 55 Polaroid Selfie No. 16 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Polaroid Selfie No. 22 6214313375 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 POLAROID _ 6214313375 p. 39 POLAROID _ p. 57 Polaroid Selfie No. 17 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 Polaroid Selfie No. 23 6214313375 Paris-New York, 1981–1983 POLAROID _ 6214313375 p.