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I just wanted to point you towards a great project that photographer Tim Mantoani has been working on since 2006. ”Behind Photographs” is a series of portraits of “historic photographers and their images” shot with a 20X24 Polaroid camera. The Polaroid camera he uses is a rare and mammoth view camera that is not easy to transport - let alone shoot with. To date Tim has photographed more than 100 photographers. Somehow I made it into that group which obviously questions his entire selection process. I’ve got to say that this is to say the least - a very ambitious project - as you know that getting any photographer IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA - is close to impossible (let alone some of the best photographers in the world who are sure to be critical of your work!)
I had a fantastic time for two reasons: First, they scheduled my portrait session right after James Nachtwey - which was a huge honor for me on a number of levels. Second - I NEVER have had a portrait made of me (unless I’m goofing around at the end of a shoot) in close to a decade - and definitely never with a 20X24 Polaroid. On average Tim shot 1 maybe 2 Polaroids of each photographer - period. So forget shooting at 10 frames a second or thousands of frames in a portrait session. It brings it back to the ways things once were - and where they should be… nail the portrait in one, maybe two frames.
Check out Tim’s site here.

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