Richard Hamilton
Polaroid Portraits 4.
London, Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 2001.
12,5 x 16,5 cm.
72 p.

While Hamilton was visiting Roy Lichtenstein in 1968, the American took a Polaroid of the British artist in his studio; some time later the Canadian artist Ian Baxter took a second photograph in similar circumstances. Back in the UK Hamilton bought a Polaroid camera and set about a project to ask artists and friends to photograph him, slowly acknowledging that each person’s sensibility was surprisingly marked in the image they created, despite the apparent automatic nature of this camera. Hamilton collected the Polaroids and published four volumes of them between 1971 and 2001. He later said that he realised ‘how silly, how banal I often look’, but wanted a binding theme through the series. ‘I submit to the will of the photographer rather than make the more aggressive demand of photographing him or her.’ (via http://www.tate.org.uk/)