In March of 2015 I was surprised to learn of the suicide of a friend of mine, fellow photographer Jaroslaw Studencki. We had gone to college together, worked together and watched bad movies together. Jaroslaw, always vibrant and irreverent, was remarkably enthusiastic about watching second-rate movies with microwave popcorn. At one point he filled the work break room with smoke after photographing a piece of black and white photo paper, “just to see what would happen.”
After the shock of his passing, I found myself looking for both a way to cope and, wistfully, hoping for a way to make contact with him in the vein of spirit photographers of yore. I remembered that in Japan in the 1970s a child psychic photographer, Masuaki Kiyota, was able to create supernatural photographs on Polaroid film. As an adult, he later admitted that many of the photographs were created by microwaving the packs of Polaroid film, “but some of them were real.” This seemed to be the perfect entry point.
I conducted a series of three separate works, each including microwaves and Polaroid film in the general vicinity where we had previously spent much time together. I wondered whether a practice used as an esoteric ruse could serve as a conduit for genuine practice and contact. After all, so much of occult history has an elaborate give-and-take relationship with fiction anyhow. Perhaps the microwave would serve as the appropriate interface to allow me to make contact with my departed friend.