Internationally renowned artist and self-described "still-life photographer" Eileen Quinlan (born 1972) uses medium- and large-format analog cameras to create abstract photographs, working the film with steel wool or lengthy chemical processing. Among the subjects of her photographs are smoke, mirrors, Mylar, colored lights and other photographs. Featuring color reproductions and in-depth critical essays by Mark Godfrey and Tom McDonough, this book surveys Quinlan’s use of Polaroid film from 2006 to 2017. Initially used as a tool for proofing, Quinlan’s Polaroids can be seen as sketches, moments in which crucial formal and conceptual questions were explored and worked out. Moving through her extensive archive, one can find the origins of almost every larger body of work, as well as many ideas that remained in the repository, evidencing the artist’s desire to push beyond the constraints of her apparatus.
