Wright Auction

Created between 1973 and 1976, Lucas Samaras's “photo-transformations” comprise a series of Polaroid images that the artist made using an SX-70 camera and chemical interventions of his own devising. Provided by the Polaroid company with both the camera and cartons of film, Samaras employed himself as model, posing in every image and then altering them by manipulating the surface of the print as it was developing. “[Samaras] scratches, rubs, and scrapes the delicate surface of the print, introducing an aesthetic of controlled agitation that shifts the register of the picture from purely photographic to something more like drawing, etching, or even painting,” writes Charles Schultz. “The relative banality of [Samaras apartment] is taken to menacing extremes through Samaras’s use of colored lights, props, and dramatic body language.” As significant predecessors to Cindy Sherman's ongoing Untitled Film Stills, which she began in 1977, Samaras's psychedelic, self-referential prints stand as innovative works that continue to haunt the image-saturated, selfie-centric present moment.