- Today is World Photography Day 2026, a celebration of all things photographic
- I’ve been enjoying a series of incredible Poalroid composites by the legendary British artist David Hockney
- Using cubist influences, Hockney shot dozens of Polaroids to create interpretations of real-world scenes
Since today is World Photography Day, it’s the perfect time for us camera nerds to celebrate our artistic medium and some of its greatest successes. For my part, I’ve been spending this day in the company of these stunning Polaroid collages by the late, great David Hockney.
Hockney, who was born in 1937 and sadly passed away in June of this year, was a long-time photography skeptic, doubting its ability to be useful in the making of great art. But in 1982 his friend, the curator Alain Sayag, suggested he use instant Polaroid photographs as a means of documenting his personal collection, and Hockney became fascinated by the medium.
In short order, he bought thousands of dollars’ worth of Polaroid film and started creating the incredible, fractal scenes, currently displayed on the David Hockney Foundation website — which I find absolutely transfixing. I’m a huge Polaroid fan so I was always going to be predisposed to enjoy these works, but I just love the way he plays with perspective and distance. The collages depict real-world scenes in a way that must have been absolutely painstaking to execute — but they stop short of naturalism.
Sometimes the same person shows up in multiple frames to create a sense of motion. Figures and faces are dismantled and reassembled in a distinctly cubist manner — critics have pointed out how many of the composites resemble the work of Picasso, one of the artists that Hockney most admired. The gaps between the images are folded into the fabric of the final collage, being embraced rather than resisted. It’s brilliant, obviously — not that you’d expect anything less from Hockney.
The artist subsequently became something of a photography convert, eventually replacing his Polaroid camera with a Pentax 110, a tiny interchangeable-lens SLR camera using 110 cartridge film. He travelled the world making more and more collages, even making one of the Grand Canyon! His composites were later shown at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York, in an exhibition titled ‘Drawing with a Camera’.
I think they’re absolutely sublime, a stunning example of a great artist turning his hand to a new medium and immediately making it his own. So, this World Photography Day, why not take a moment to spend some time with a photographer or artist whose work you love?
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