SX-70 Series: Diamonds
October 23 – November 8, 1981
In the pre-digital era, the Polaroid SX-70 was a revelation. Polaroid ‘instant’ film had existed since 1948, but it was a bit of a complicated and messy process, to deliver a small black and white image. Practically speaking, it was more novelty than a tool. But for most people, here was no short cut to see what had actually happened when you pressed the shutter. But then, along came Dr. Edwin Land, enabling a feedback loop that could connect action with image, conceptualization with realization.
In 1972 the SX-70 camera was itself a bit of a curiosity: a flat, book-like slab that expanded into a pop-up SLR. When you pressed the shutter release there was noise, action, a little oblong was spit out the front of the camera like it was sticking its tongue out at the subject. It was: a pale jade-turquoise square neatly framed in white, that as you watched began a metamorphosis into a deep, richly coloured image. But it wasn’t just a 2-D rendering of the subject. It had an ability to transform reality into something more exciting with a kind of heightened interpretation. It wasn’t accurate, and that was one of its virtues. The highlights were attenuated, the shadows dark and obscure, and the colour rendering unreliable. It had the potential to transform the banal into something mysterious. Even symbolic.
Above all, the SX-70 gave you on-the-spot feedback enabling real time trial and error. This was a pre-digital, revolutionary development, within the limitations of the camera and material itself. It was a temptation that even luminaries of art and photography such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Walker Evans, André Kertész, David Hockney, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Daido Moriyama could not resist experimenting with. The small size and peculiar rendering of SX-70 film meant that the image could be read at once as a jewel-like window on some alternate reality, or as a punchy graphic. Seeing the image emerge from its opaque state made it seem more like a still from a movie, or something with a life of its own.
For Christmas 1973, my father gave my mother an SX-70 camera. She didn’t get much time to enjoy it, as I commandeered it for my own experimentation. In early 1975 I got my own SX-70 camera. It used a disposable “Flash Bar” consisting of 10 bulbs – five on each side – in that plugged in above the lens. This was expensive, and limited lighting to a flat, straight-on blast. To provide more lighting options I rigged an adaptor that plugged into the Flash Bar socket and provided a pc jack to trigger an independent electronic flash. A lot of the images in this series were made using this arrangement, which made it possible to model the subject more dramatically, or cast deep shadows.
The unusual shape and configuration of the opened SX-70 camera made it as easy to frame images on a diagonal, as levelled up. There was no problem with presenting them diagonally with an over matte to conceal the broader lower margin. The diamond orientation seemed to help dislodge the image from a literal reading, to become something more symbolic or suggestive.
The newness of the medium freed me to do something quite unrelated to work I’d done until then, and to head off in a direction of free-association. I assembled the resulting images a bit like a set of Rorschach ink blots and found that, when placed together, the relationships between and among the images amplified the possibilities of their non-verbal dialogue.
At the time it was introduced, the Polaroid SX-70 was a great gift to the creative world. The specialness of its technology and excitement it generated amongst photographers now seems lost in a tsunami of digital developments, many of which threaten to devalue the credibility of photographic imagery of all kinds. Seemingly against all odds, SX-70 film is still available – albeit as a boutique product from the Netherlands – so this unique format joins a general resurgence of interest in analog photography.
Ken Straiton. 2025
Kenneth Straiton was born in Toronto, graduated from University of Waterloo with an Honours BA in Social Psychology. In 1973 he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to study architecture, but soon left to study film, eventually settling on a career as a photo-artist. Meanwhile he worked as a carpenter, taught photography, and traveled extensively. The 1982 series “Quiet Idols,” was shown in Canada, Japan, Europe and USA.
In 1984 Straiton moved to Tokyo, where he worked for 26 years in commercial and corporate photography, magazine features, while continuing work on his personal projects.
From the time he arrived, the city of Tokyo became the main focus of his personal work. The exhibition “Tokyo Stories”, was shown first in Zurich in 1992, has continued to evolve. Further Tokyo projects evolved, revolving around the built environment, focusing on its interaction with vernacular life and culture: “One Hundred Views of Tokyo” and “Tokyo Street Level”.
A series about traditional Japanese design, “Japanese Elements” became the book “Japanese Design: A Collection”, by Kenneth Straiton is in its second printing: by Weatherhill in N.Y. and Yohan/ICB books in Japan.
While based in Japan, Straiton worked over 20 years on documenting the disappearing cultures and landscapes across China and Southeast Asia.
Since returning to Toronto, Canada in 2010, Straiton has been at work on a new project on the landscape and built environment, examining the vast transitional region surrounding Toronto, where farmland and nature are transformed into tract housing, warehouses, and chain retailers.