Melt - Polaroids
Storm Thorgerson, from Hipgnosis, introduced Peter to the work that Les Krims was doing with Polaroids. They began experimenting with hundreds of Polaroids, having fun squashing and squeezing and smearing the developing images, a technique later known as Krimsography. These are many of the results compiled by hand by Storm.
“I’d had a dream of a melting face, some kind of wax effigy caught possibly in a museum fire. To achieve the painterly dripping effect we used ordinary Polaroids (after Les Krims) and if one pushes around the developing picture sandwiched between two bits of plastic with a blunt instrument like the end of a pencil the image is then smeared as it develops. Since this procedure is dead easy we did it loads of times along with Pete Gabriel in disfiguring himself by manipulating Polaroids as they ‘developed’. Peter impressed us greatly with his ability to appear in an unflattering way, preferring the theatrical or artistic to the cosmetic. Because we couldn’t decide on a favourite, for they were all great fun, we used lots” Storm Thorgerson.
“There was a photographer called Les Krims, who discovered that if you take a Polaroid and you squash it you can get the colours to run, and we used to go after them with different objects and sort of burnt matches and coins and fingers and all sorts of things and it was a lot of fun ‘cause you had to get the timing right, but you got some wonderful effects out of the distortions” Peter Gabriel.
