National Launch for REAL FUN @ OFFICE
We’re a big fan of the Polaroid camera and not just for its quality of instant gratification, there is something about the way the Polaroid treats color, the way that it introduces texture into an image that makes them very through-the-looking glass in a decidedly low-fi way. Immediate, tossed off even, the Polaroid is instant yesterday.
So if you’re going to chronicle, we suggest you do as Ashod Simonian did and drag along the Polaroid 600 One Step and its obscenely expensive film. Simonian did just that on the composite road trip(s) captured in REAL FUN: Photographs from the Independent Music Landscape. Pretty interesting that the visual qualities of the Polaroid mean that REAL FUN in some ways puts an era in a bottle while it’s still being played out.
In a sense a pictorial On The Road with perhaps a less frenzied pace, REAL FUN traces an anecdotal trail, both visual and in text, of life on the road of bands/artists like Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Elliott Smith, The Shins, Sleater Kinney, and more. That the artists featured in the book (and on the included CD) have made Portland a base makes it most fitting that the national book launch take place here in Portland, at OFFICE (2204 NE Alberta). The book won’t be available anywhere but OFFICE until June.
Meantime, OFFICE also hosts an exhibition of limited edition Polaroid prints on canvas of 24 of Simonian’s photos from REAL FUN. At tomorrow’s launch party, Thursday, April 26 from 7-9 PM at OFFICE, New Deal pours, Simonian signs books, and DJ: Spiral Stairs (formerly of Pavement) will be spinning. Who knows who might show up?
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