Polaroid Week: Jari Poulin

Polaroid Week: Jari Poulin by Michael HoneggerJune 5, 2025

©Jari Poulin, Looking Up

Polaroid photography, with its distinctive immediacy and nostalgic charm, has long captivated artists seeking to push the boundaries of image-making. This week we spotlight five innovative Polaroid artists whose diverse practices explore the full spectrum of the medium’s creative possibilities—from experimental manipulations and emulsion lifts to hand-altered prints and conceptual storytelling. Each brings a unique vision to the format, demonstrating that the instant photo is a dynamic and thriving alternative.

Dreamscapes is a deeply personal and imaginative body of work by Jari Poulin that blurs the boundary between memory and dream, childhood wonder and adult reflection. Born from Jari’s desire to reconnect with a sense of play and innocence amid a climate of political unrest and social anxiety, this series explores another variation of visual storytelling through the distinct and tactile medium of Polaroid photography. Through the process of hand-painting and reworking Polaroid prints—both analog and digitally adapted—she creates ethereal scenes that evoke the quiet purity of inner landscapes untouched by external chaos.

Rooted in memories of Western New York and the symbolic presence of barns as spaces of simplicity, imagination, and nostalgia, the Dreamscapes project traverses time through repeated subjects and reinterpreted imagery. By revisiting photographs across years and layering them with painterly interventions, the work becomes a meditation on memory, transformation, and the creative spirit. Through this evolving series, Jari not only honors the tactile magic of Polaroid film but also invites viewers into a world where dream, memory, and artistic expression converge.

©Jari Poulin, Floral Dress Twirl

In Jari’s words:

“Dreamscapes began as a need to engage my own sense of child’s play and delve into my deep imagination. In these very tumultuous political times in our country, they became not just an escape, but a way to connect with what is pure and unfettered by the social-political anxiety. It was my opportunity experience imagery in a dream like state and express it through hand-painted imagery.

Dreamscapes are places where the melding of images of a child at play and an adult counterpart are punctuated by the symbolism of a barn which represents a large space to play in, to imagine a life inside of, to dream of the play that occurs outside its walls in the grass and meadows beyond it. A barn represents simplicity and wholesomeness to me. Having grown up in Western NY where there is an abundance of barns, I was always fascinated by them and the lifestyle they represented to me. In Dreamscapes I am revisiting space, time and memory and painting my images with lucid responses.

©Jari Poulin, Barn 1

I began working with Polaroids in the late 90’s with the DayLab and creating emulsion transfers onto art paper that I would then hand-color. The process was magical in that it allowed me to alter the image and add my own voice and hand to the photographic image. This process was revelatory to me at the time and helped to change the course of the work I made to include various artist media to my work as well as to embrace the creative expansion it allowed in in my photographic work.

©Jari Poulin, Barn2

Having come back to working with Polaroids over the past few years I have been experimenting extensively with the capabilities of the new Polaroid films and cameras as well as the classic SX70 and the new Polaroid Lab which allows for digital images to be printed on Polaroid film by taking a Polaroid picture of the digital images and printing it.

©Jari Poulin, Barn3

In the Dreamscape images I have used both the Polaroid I2 camera, the Now+ camera and the Polaroid Lab which allowed me to print and paint images that were made in years past. As a collection of prints I have included images of a child that I photographed four times over 8 years and a woman who embodies the same sense of child’s play that appeals to me senses and this project. In all there are over 20 images in the whole collection, and I may add to this over time.”

©Jari Poulin, Sidy by Backdrop

Jari Poulin is an artist and printmaker using photography as the main expression of her practice. She lives and works from her studios in Ithaca, NY and her apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She holds her MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design (formerly the Art Institute of Boston). Her work is primarily portrait based and explores ideas of the ephemeral, memory, and identity. As a former dancer/choreographer her work often features movement and dance or the implied sense of physicality and kinetic energy.

Throughout her various bodies of work, Jari often pushes settled visual boundaries to reveal or conceal information in the images. She is interested in how the brain chooses to see, fill in the blanks, and discard visual information as is common in selective memory. As an artist and fine art photographer, Jari’s images are photographically based, but at times she seeks to challenge traditional notions of the photograph by using various combinations of digital and analog processes, as well as mixed media, installation and printmaking techniques such as polymer photogravure, monotypes, and stenciling within her practice.

Ms. Poulin is the recipient of many national and international awards including the International Photo Awards (IPA), 15th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, 7^th Worldwide Pollux Awards, Moscow International Foto Awards (MIFA), Prix de la Photographie, Paris (PX3), International Color Awards, ND Magazine Awards, Black and White Magazine Portfolio Award Winner, Color Magazine Portfolio Prize, the Ink Shop International Mini Print Juried Exhibit and has been published those affiliated magazines and online galleries.

Her work has been exhibited widely including the Barcelona Foto Bienniale, ClampArt Gallery NYC, Praxis Gallery, Gallery 1202, the Bower’s Museum, C4FAP, Galerie de la Ferme du Mousseau, Elancourt, France as well as in Limerick, Ireland with the Ink Shop Printmaking Center, Griffin Museum of Photography, John Wayne International Airport, Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta Photography Group, PhotoPlace Gallery Vermont, the Lunder Gallery in Boston, SE Center for Photography, Cape Cod Center for Photography, and various galleries in Taos, NM, NYC for the Story of the Creative Exhibition, See Me Year in Review Exhibition on Long Island, The Ink Shop Printmaking Center, State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca, NY, and in many venues throughout the Finger Lakes region.

Instagram: @going_polaroid

Instagram: @jaripoulin