Farewell 665 - the subject speaks
Fei Teng, 1999
Tobias Titz's Scratch project has both an aesthetic and an ethical dimension, each enabled by the special properties of Polaroid technology. Titz takes two photos: the first is a portrait; the second an identical shot, taken a moment later, after the subject has walked out of the frame. This yields four images: a print and a negative of each shot. Titz hands the second, empty negative to his subject. What (s)he scribes into the wet, coalescing emulsion is as open as the image itself: a sketch, a piece of folk wisdom, a comment
on the process. In addition to sharing authorship in the final diptych, the
subject also receives from Titz the original portrait print. The Scratch project
has been running for twelve years.
Text by Dr Andrew Hurley
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