Polaroids, Small Prints & Ephemera

Are you going to be in Mexico City on Thursday February 6th?

My newsletter will go back to its regular— should I say irregular format after this post.

I’ll be in Mexico City for an exhibition I curated. Opens Thursday, February 6th. It’s at Anent Gallery.

Londres 28, 2nd Floor, Juarez, Cuauhtemoc, CDMX

The show coincides with Zona Maco and Material. It’s Mexico City Art Week.

I want to show photography in a way that doesn’t feel two dimensional. More like objects. I’m overstimulated walking down 7th Avenue. Even more so at an art fair. It’s a crowded space— photography often overlooked.

Back in September Ana asked me to curate a show for her. I thought about one I saw at David Zwirner back in 2009.

Thousand by Philip Lorca diCorcia. First shown the year before at LACMA. PL made 4000 Polaroids over twenty five years. Edited down to 1000. The way it was installed stuck with me.

There’s a book to go with it. It’s a brick. Paper is tissue thin. I’m telling you the details cuz I’m into the physicality of things.

Maybe you’re asking— why’s he doing this all? That’s ok, I’m asking myself that too. Maybe it’s that too much is digital. New tech. The apps. Tracking. Rating.

Someone wanted to buy me an Oura Ring.

Why do I need this?

“To keep track of things. So you know if you got a good night sleep or not,” she said.

I don’t get it. I know how I slept. I DID THE SLEEPING.

It’s also ugly.

The constant rating of each other. The driver and your Uber ratings. I don’t care what yours is. Rate your meal. Rate your stay. Rate your flight. Rate your food delivery. Slide that thing over and align the legs of a cat to confirm you’re not a robot. Log in to your account. Log in again with the 17 digit code texted to you. What’s my password? Thank god Becky in Nolita reposted what to have in my go-bag incase there’s a fire in Pasadena. Click to prove again you’re not a robot. Seven Uber notifications per ride. You’re being dropped off in a bike lane. Look both ways before exiting. Did you forget your toothbrush. What are you, my mom?

It’s more data on a list of I don’t give a fuck.

It’s all a Time Thief. I made a zine about it. Sold out. Shoulda bought it in 2019. The pictures are not on the nose. Rather my reaction to the above. First two are polaroids.

I like to see something visually pleasing in person. In a room with other people who appreciate it. So I’ve tried to create those experiences. Hopefully appreciated by other people. And that it’ll lead to more shows and books.

Reminds me to talk more about the one on Feb 6th. A picture that’s more of an object. You can handle it. Has dexterity. Like a Xerox.

Yea— there’s a through line.

Polaroids have a gloss to them. Kinda creamy. The white border is chalky. Gotta see them in person though. Loses their luster on a screen. I thought about an Irina Rozovksy picture I’ve loved for years. It’s not a polaroid. But has this shine to it. The colors beam. I asked her first to be in the exhibition.

Untitled from Mountain Black Heart, 2016 (flowers in bottles), 14 x 10.25" in, Edition of 3 & 2 AP's —$1,200

I wanted to print it smaller than Irina had in the past. Along with some pictures from Jerry Hsu.

Daniel Arnold

And Rafa Prieto

There is a small print cluster from Shaniqwa Jarvis. Sold as one piece. Polaroids from Mike Brodie, Mario and Gray Sorrenti. Ephemera from Nicole Della Costa.

Vince Aletti’s The Drawer last year at White Columns was one of the best things I saw in 2024. Excited to show a collage of his as part of my exhibition. We met a few weeks ago to assemble it.

Back to things not being on the nose. It’s why I like Pia-Paulina Guilmoth’s book so much. About her two year transition. It’s conceptual. Thoughtful. I put her work in both my LA and CDMX shows. They’re not made with a camera. Pia coats the spider webs with bioluminescent pigments and adheres them to the polaroid. Like photograms.

Polaroids, Small Prints and Ephemera will open Thursday night, February 6th from 6pm - 9pm. If you’re going to be in town I hope you’ll come. Let’s get something good to eat. I’ll be there all week.

Press release below:

Polaroids, Small Prints and Ephemera curated by Aaron Stern for Anent Gallery coincides with the Zona Maco art fair in Mexico City. Opening Thursday February 6th 2025.

Stern asks us to reconsider the photograph as more than an image—a physical object that demands to be experienced in person. In an era where most pictures exist digitally, fleetingly viewed on screens before disappearing into the endless scroll, this exhibition calls for a return to presence and materiality.

Photographs today often live as detritus, stored on our iPhones or uploaded to cloud servers, stripped of their physicality. Simultaneously, galleries have moved away from showing photography, contributing to its relegation to the digital realm. This show pushes back against that trend, celebrating the photograph as an object that carries weight, texture, and a story that cannot be fully conveyed through pixels on a screen.

The works in Polaroids, Small Prints and Ephemera demonstrate the richness of engaging with photography in its tangible form. Polaroids, with their instant and singular nature, offer intimacy and immediacy. Small prints, demanding close inspection, pull us into their details and evoke a sense of quiet discovery. And ephemera—those peripheral elements like handwritten notes, creased paper, or torn edges—remind us that photographs are as much about the context of their creation as the image itself.

This exhibition is an invitation to experience photographs as they were meant to be seen: in person, where their material presence and physical nuances resonate deeply. It is a call to value photography as more than a fleeting digital record, to re-engage with its potential to preserve, provoke, and endure. In doing so, Polaroids, Small Prints and Ephemera underscores photography’s role not only as art but as an artifact of human connection and memory.

Photograph by Jerry Hsu