Polaroid Emulsion Transfers: The Deconstructed Image

What happens when a photograph is no longer fixed to its original surface? This new online process-based workshop invites you to slow down and explore the tactile, transformative possibilities of emulsion lifts and transfers using Polaroid film. Led by artist and educator Cali M Banks, this four-session program centers on hands-on experimentation and attentive making, where touch, time, and material sensitivity guide the image as much as intention.

We work with emulsion, the light-sensitive layer within Polaroid film, which can be separated while wet and transferred onto new surfaces. Through this process, images shift and soften, producing unexpected textures, translucency, color variation, and distortion. Rather than treating these changes as errors, Cali encourages you to embrace imperfection, chance, and instability as essential elements of the work.

Through guided demonstrations and weekly explorations, we investigate how temperature, pacing, pressure, and surface choice influence the transfer process. As the weeks progress, our experimentation expands to include sequencing, layering, hand manipulation, and transferring images onto alternative surfaces and objects. Subtle interventions such as tearing, folding, and reassembling images are introduced as ways to further disrupt and reframe photographic meaning.

Each session includes group image reviews and guided discussion that support reflection on process, materiality, and the evolving life of the photographic image once it has been deconstructed and reconstructed. Together, we consider how physical transformation alters authorship, memory, and narrative within photographic practice. By the end of the workshop, you leave with a deeper understanding of emulsion transfer as both a technical process and a conceptual tool, along with a body of experimental work rooted in curiosity, touch, and material engagement.