JOACHIM KNILL is today's ArtistADay

If one is fun, and twice is nice, then three must be the charm.

First, Randall Stoltzfus was the featured artist on ArtistADay.com. Then, a Migration fav, Susan Jamison, was featured. And now, Joachim Knill, Migration's Polaroid photographer extraordinaire, is today's ArtistADay. We have reason to be excited about this: The attention for each of these artists explodes from this exposure (Randall has received over 13,000 visits and is currently ranked #3 in votes). ArtistADay.com has a very large following, and, more importantly, it is a discriminating following. So, today, go to Joachim's page, take a look, vote, comment, and contact me if you need any more information about his work.

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I find the timeliness of Joachim's selection to be exceptionally appropriate. For starters, the demise of Polaroid has been a hot topic recently. This month's Art and Antiques cover story is titled "Polaroid's Last Shot" (by Sheila Gibson Stoodley). It is filled with great perspectives from some notable artists like Chuck Close, Elsa Dorfman and David Hockney about the importance and uniqueness of Polaroid images. Chuck Close says, "There's so much more information embedded in it than can be seen with the naked eye – unbelievable detail and real physicality."

For those of you who have followed artPark, you are already familiar with Joachim's utterly unique and masterful work (read my early review here). Although many artists rent Polaroid's large format 20"x24" camera to capture their work, Joachim took the extra step and built his own camera. His, however takes 20"x30" photographs. You may read that as a minor difference, but, in reality, it is a monumental. The hoops he had to jump through to convince Polaroid to allow him to use their film in his camera rather than theirs would deter virtually every other artist. Not Joachim. And his persistence has paid off.

Creating his handmade surreal worlds, adding the drama of stage lighting, and capturing them on large format Polaroid film with his one-of-a-kind camera has drawn rave reviews. Laura Parsons of The Hook said, "Say 'Polaroid' and most people envision waving a hand-sized snapshot in the air, drying it as the image emerges... But what Knill's 20x30 single-exposure photographs have in common with those pics is what the Grand Canyon shares with a creek bed – i.e. they're technically created the same way, but the former is, how shall we say, considerably more eye-popping."

See more of Joachim's work here and here.

[Images include:  1) Circus; 2) Armor]

Comments

[Ginevra]

[this is good] :)