I’ve always been a fan of Polaroid film. Since childhood, the magic of an image appearing instantly has made me happy. In 2014, I was given permission to salvage in an abandoned house, which was slated for demolition a week later, in Jamestown. R.I. This classic, shingle style house, which now had holes in the roof, had once been the beautiful home of David Aston and his family. On the living room floor I found a large collection of Polaroid pictures scattered amongst the debris of the decaying house.

Upon closer inspection, I realized I had found a group of photographs that represented many years worth of documentation using a Polaroid camera. The subjects included family portraits, yachting scenes, back yard activities, architectural landmarks, historic houses, and beautiful landscapes and seascapes.

I immediately began to draw inspiration from these photographs. I was curating images that had already been curated by the photographer’s unique world-view. I identified with David Aston’s intuitive need to record things that were meaningful to him. Through my observation of these photos, I recognized a connection to my own emotional and sentimental need to record memories of people, places, and things. This primal human tendency to record what we see in order to serve as a reference for the temporal nature of our experience is something I have found to be universal. For me these images transcend individual sensibilities and enter into the world of our collective consciousness.

– Luke M. Randall 2017