WRITERS PRIZE: 30 / JAN / 2026
THIS PHOTO WILL SELF-DESTRUCT
Polaroids as Residue and Quiet Acts of Care in the Urban Everyday
by Ciara Rodgers
A click, a whirr and magically an image begins to appear. Not all at once, but gradually, as if the world is revealing itself again. In my visual art practice, Polaroids aren’t nostalgic; they’re a way of paying attention—a way of walking with the city and sometimes, against it. For my relationship to the city is shaped by a gendered experience of space, moving through it with alertness, caution, and a persistent sense of being both visible and out of place. Here I write in my eighth month of pregnancy, trying to remember a time I ever felt more visible and out of place, the awkward hours of adolescence, perhaps?
Taking lead from the Situationist idea of the dérive, drifting through city streets, development edges, and derelict corners, I notice textures, ruptures, and absences. Gaps that seem to speak even louder than the structures around them. Along the way, I will collect materials left behind: fragments of plaster, insulation foam, and torn packaging. These discarded objects tell stories about class, care, construction, and neglect. Like the Polaroids I carry with me, they’re easily missed. Both are remnants. Both ask to be looked at again on return to the studio.
I treat the Polaroids as field notes or clues. They’re not that precious. They’re awkward, often off-kilter, and shaped by the particular walk, the outdoor temperature, my body heat, and the expiration date of the film. The horizon might tilt. A corner might be missing. But these imperfections matter. They carry the perspective of someone moving through the city, not from a place of authority or ownership, but with a questioning presence.
There’s also something tactile, bodily about working with Polaroids. They develop in response to heat, light, and time. I often tuck fresh prints into my coat or under layers of clothing to coax them into life. My body becomes part of the development process, chest, pocket, armpit, an improvised darkroom on the move. In cold weather, the chemistry falters, colours shift, or remain ghostly and greenish. The image is never neutral, shaped by the season or the street I’m standing on. Every photograph carries traces of the day, a collaboration between camera, city, and body.
And yet, there is no disappearing behind the camera. The Polaroid camera makes itself known. Taking one out in public feels like becoming a character, an eccentric tourist. There’s something theatrical and oh so conspicuous about using the boxy camera, the mechanical clunk and whirr, the film spooling out under the black tongue. It draws attention in a way that visibility reflects the discomfort of being in spaces where you don’t fully belong. It mirrors the act of noticing and being noticed in return. It can also feel absurd, like playing the part of a comedy spy. Strangers look, sometimes curiously, sometimes warily. But that visibility is part of the dynamic. To photograph in this way is to be present, to be noticed, even momentarily, in spaces that often make certain bodies invisible.
What I ultimately love about Polaroids is their immediacy, their imperfection. There’s no editing, there’s no do-over. The chemistry might misfire, the colours might bleed, but that instability is part of their truth. In a world saturated with slick, controlled images, the Polaroid hums with uncertainty and refuses polish. You get one shot, one physical imprint, one moment, fixed and fragile. This material honesty connects to my other influences. I look to Arte Povera for its radical use of humble materials and the irreverent, raw attitude of punk, which echoes through the way I annotate, manipulate, or embed Polaroids into my installations. Their objecthood matters; they’re not just images. They’re things that age, scratch, fade, and carry touch.
They’re small acts of care, evidence of presence in places often erased by development or smoothed over by gentrification. They whisper rather than shout. They invite you to linger, to trace the edge of something disappearing.
And maybe that’s what I’m after in the end. Not clarity or any resolution. But a feeling. A tension. A crack.
Images (courtesy of the artist): There’s screaming and crying in the high-rise blocks, 2024, Polaroid, papier mâché, decorative foam moulding trim, shelf, 70 x 33 x 8 cm. Ciara Rodgers, Folly | Façade, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Lombard Street, Waterford. 8th June – 13th July 2024. Curated by Aideen Quirke (top), Charmingly Vague, 2023, Polaroid 600 Round Series, 9 x 11cm (bottom)
This Photo Will Self-Destruct: Polaroids as Residue and Quiet Acts of Care in the Urban Everyday was shortlisted for the Source prize for new writing about photography in 2025.
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