Oliver Mark: Outsider and Insider

Daniel Barenboim, Madeleine Albright, Dustin Hoffman, Yoko Ono, and Pope Benedict XVI—in recent years Oliver Mark (*1963 in Gelsenkirchen) has taken photographs of countless artists, actors, politicians, and other celebrities. He generally shoots most of his unusual portraits with a digital single-lens reflex camera. Yet he always takes his old Polaroid camera to every photo session and every party—film has been available for it again for a few years now, manufactured by enthusiasts who did not want to let the instant photo die. This large-format volume assembles Mark’s experiments with the new black-and-white film made by the Impossible Project Company. They open up a new, more intimate view of the people depicted. “The good thing is that nobody thinks of this camera as threatening,” says Mark. “It often lets me get closer to people than I can with my professional camera.”