William Wegman Polaroids

Gathers the best of the photographer's creative and often whimsical canine portraits as taken with a 20 x 24-inch Polaroid camera, in a treasury accompanied by an essay on his experiences with the camera and with his models.

Fall in love with these funny, striking, and surreal pups. William Wegman's whimsical photographs of his Weimaraner dogs have been celebrated in the art world and enjoyed by pet lovers for nearly four decades. In this entirely new volume, renowned photography curator William A. Ewing presents more than 300 images from the artist's personal archive, unearthing previously unseen gems alongside the iconic images that have made Wegman—along with dressed-up dogs Man Ray, Fay Ray, and others—beloved worldwide. Presented in sixteen thematic chapters, William Wegman: Being Human foregrounds the photographer's penchant for play and his evergreen ability to create images that are at once funny, striking, and surreal. Audiences of all ages will fall in love—for the first time, or all over again—with Wegman and his friends.

From its inception in 1947, the Polaroid system inspired artists to experiment - to dazzling effect - with the cameras' unique technologies. Edwin Land, the inventor of the first Polaroid instant camera, remarked on his discovery, "Photography will never be the same." And he was right. This fascinating journey through the Polaroid era documents the evolution of instant photography. Hundreds of color images celebrate the myriad ways Polaroid photographs were used and ingeniously manipulated by Chuck Close, Walker Evans, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucas Samaras, William Wegman, and others. In addition, the book features essays addressing the unique technology of instant photography and the marketing genius of the Polaroid Corporation. Interviews with artists reveal how Polaroids affected and, in many instances, forever changed the way artists captured the world around them. AUTHOR: Mary-Kay Lombino is the Emily Hargroves Fisher '57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She has curated several exhibitions including Off the Shelf: New Forms in Contemporary Artists' Books and Utopian Mirage: Social Metaphors in Contemporary Photography. ILLUSTRATIONS: 230 photos

In her haste to flee the palace before her fairy godmother's magic loses effect, Cinderella leaves behind a glass slipper. Photographs show the characters depicted as Weimaraner dogs.

With family photos, video and film stills, and studio photos never before published, Fay captures the collaborative spirit and amazing artistic outpouring of Wegman and his extraordinary companion. Their relationship spanned ten years during which time Fay became as well known to the art world as her canine predecessor, Man Ray. Motherhood brought Fay new concerns and Wegman a wealth of new characters. In 1989 she was joined in the studio by three of her puppies. What followed was a flowering of dramatic roles for Fay and her offspring in a wide range of books and videos for children.

Tells the remarkable tale of Edwin Land's one-of-a-kind invention-from Polaroid's first instant camera to hit the market in 1948, to its meteoric rise in popularity and adoption by artists such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close, to the company's dramatic decline into bankruptcy in the late '90s and its unlikely resurrection in the digital age.

This book reproduces 25 photographs, taken with a rare Polaroid camera, resulting from an unusually close partnership of man and dog, Wegman's Weimaraner, Man Ray. Together, they have created a series of images that play upon the great variety of human and animal life that surrounds us.