In reaction to the last polaroid films being produced becoming expired, The Observer sent renowned photographer Rankin to produce images of gordon Brown, PM at that time, using a polaroid.
Rankin said the act of using a camera he wasn’t familiar with, relaxed Gordon Brown, and led to these surprisingly comforting images.
“I try to go into any shoot without any preconceptions,” elaborates Rankin, “but with Brown you can’t help be aware that he is supposed to be dour. I found the opposite was the case. He was a really fascinating – and fascinated – bloke. Really inquisitive about what I was doing. It got me thinking that maybe no one had ever taken a good honest photograph of him before.”… “If you’re a good photographer, you can take a great shot on any format.”
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/06/polaroid-project-sean-ohagan
The way in which Rankin has photographed quite a distant subject with something so casual as a polaroid makes the images quite, surreal, we aren’t used to seeing Gordon Brown depicted in this way. This is what I aim to do with my project by using an intimate immediate format to document a connection between 2 fans.
