Cary Loren: Polaroids

In Polaroids, Michigan-based artist, musician, writer and bookstore owner Cary Loren (born 1955) interweaves snapshots of his 1970s Detroit entourage along with photographs of his elaborately staged collage assemblages of prints, TV stills, magazine covers, stickers, movie posters and other ephemera. This particular medium allows for direct manipulation of seemingly unrelated visual idioms into pictures of skillfully artistic quality.

As a founder and member of Destroy All Monsters, as well as owner of Book Beat, Loren’s variety of works assembles into an impressive pictorial altar of memento mori, assimilating his obsession with pop and trash culture, glamour, transience and death. This narrative is extended by the inclusion of an interview conducted by American artist Cameron Jamie in cemeteries beside the graves of Loren’s idols (including Vampira, Ed Wood Jr. and Jayne Mansfield), where Loren’s own life story is told against the biographical background of those buried icons of pop culture.