Regarding the Altered Polaroid art - I recently rediscovered the archival 4x5 and medium format negatives of my original Polaroid™ 600 and SX-70 images that I did in the mid and late 1990s and had them digitally archived for the 21st century. These are enlargements of those actual Polaroid photographs.

SPECIAL NOTE: The Polaroid films sold today for SX-70 and 600 cameras are made from a different chemical composition by the newly resurrected Polaroid Company via the Impossible Project. Unfortunately, these new films harden before the image appears and cannot be manipulated like the images shown here, pre-2000. These images can never be made again. Fortunately, the Polaroids shown here were photographed in 4x5 and medium format negatives between 1993-2000, making the "image" color archival. The original Polaroids are not for sale and are in a private collection. Because real Polaroids fade over time when exposed to light, these are reproductions printed with archival quality in mind.

Excerpt from Oklahoma Today Magazine Vol. 48, No. 3 March|April 1998 and updated for accuracy < With the end of a stainless steel spoon handle, Kevin Garrison manipulates Polaroid photos, changing the face of Oklahoma and beyond with their greasy spoons, abandoned theaters, and classic cars. “I manipulate it just enough to make it look like a painting but sill have that photographic quality that has all the detail in it,” he says. Although Garrison has experimented with toothpicks and wooden pottery tools, nothing works as well as his trusty little utensil which fits in the palm of his hand. • Armed with a OneStep Polaroid camera, Garrison looks for his next subject, sometimes down a forgotten highway or deserted town while traveling through the American Mid-West and Southwest including Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming. “I take the picture, sit down on the sidewalk, and just start manipulating it as it develops,” he says. Using SX-70 film in the OneStep camera (which requires a small camera adjustment), Garrison has between five and fifteen minutes to work with the photo before it sets, unlike 600 film, which allows about a three-minute window before it’s frozen in time. • In the late 1980s, he ran across a magazine with a shot of an altered Polaroid. Intrigued — and always a guy with a sideline project — Garrison tried his hand at this medium. • In 1994, the Kirkpatrick Galley of Oklahoma artists exhibited his work. In 1998, Oklahoma Today Magazine featured his photo on the cover of their March/April Travel Issue and in an 8-page Portfolio. In July of 2000, he exhibited at the Stamper Photographic Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri.