Polaroid Portraits

This set of portraits was made in the small studio I've set up at home, where I installed a large format camera and some flash lights. They're mainly portraits of family and friends done in the last two years in which I used as film the extinct Polaroid 55. In some of them I used the solarization technique (or Sabattier Effect).

Having this house loodged many decades ago a real photography studio open to the public and that even receive the distinction of 'Photographers of the Royal House', it was a very interesting personal experience to re-create what would have been at the time, the portrait sessions, with the necessary pose that the large format camera 4x5 obliges.

This experience become a small studio, set together with the photographer Rui Dias Monteiro and that nowadays accepts commisioned orders of individual portraits, called 'The Beautiful Skull' (www.thebeautifulskull.com).

Text: Manuel Luís Cochofel
Translation: Sofia Quintas