Polaroid 20x24:
A Camera Called Ruby

WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW KAISER       PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHELLE MEDINA       MODEL: NAOMI STRANGE       20X24 TECHNICIAN: TRACEY STORER

I arrived at Left Space Studio, home to the Polaroid 20x24 here in San Francisco on a brisk Originally created to accurately reproduce large scale works of art, the camera has developed a strong following among the artistic elite, becoming an instrument of passage for photographers seeking the ultimate in large format photography. Only three 20x24 studios available for use by the general public exist – one in New York, Prague, and San Francisco.

Heading to the heart of the California Bay Area, THE NEW NUDE Magazine decided to conduct a shoot of our own with the prestigious Polaroid 20x24 Camera. This is what we found…


Wednesday afternoon. From the outside of the building you’d never know it was a photography studio. Built from dark grey non-descript cement with frosted windows across the front, it looked more like an old warehouse then anything else. Michelle, our behind the scenes photographer, and Naomi, the model for the shoot, met me at the front door before going in.

The building had a call-box attached to the entrance. As I rang the buzzer it felt a little like I was requesting access to a bank vault or some top secret government building. Alas, no MP’s opened the front door, but instead we were greeted by a nice looking middle aged man.

He took an inquisitive look at us and just when I was about to speak a smile appeared on his face, “you must be here for this!” He pointed to a postcard sitting on a table just inside the foyer with a cream colored portrait printed on the front complete with trademark Polaroid edges.

“Yes!” I replied and we quickly shuffled inside.

Tracey Storer, the official licensed Polaroid technician, was waiting for us in the shooting space, the magnificent Polaroid 20x24 camera all set up and ready to go. It’s a rare thing for me to be lost for words, but one look at the Polaroid 20x24 camera and I was left with nothing but a gaping mouth wide enough for a truck to run through it.

The camera stood just shy of an inch shorter then me, the diameter of the copal lens nearly as big around as my face. The ground glass alone made an 8x10 view camera seem almost dwarfish by comparison. Mounted on large rubber wheels the camera stood there in the middle of the studio with this indescribable presence and we all felt the need to approach with caution.

“Am I really posing for that?” said Naomi. It seemed she was at a loss for words too.

Once we all managed to snap ourselves back to reality it was time to get to work. Naomi began applying a simple foundation of makeup while Tracey and I started assembling a basic lighting setup. Michelle was all the while snapping pictures of the camera and setup, documenting the entire experience.

“Does the camera have a name?” asked Michelle

Tracey chuckled a little. “I call her Ruby,” he replied, “because she used to have bright red bellows.”

There was a large packing crate sitting in the corner of the studio.

“I was up in the Seattle area with the camera last week,” explained Tracey, “Jock Sturges was using Ruby for a project of his.”

Despite its overwhelming size, the camera was surprisingly simple to operate so we decided to go with an equally simple lighting scheme. Like most view cameras there was no auto focus, no built in light meter, no white balance controls, and no electronics of any kind. In essence we were working with the most basic of photographic principles; f-stop, shutter speed, focus, and repeat. The real trick lay in the unpredictable nature of the Polaroid film itself.

Polaroid produces three different films for the 20x24 camera; color, black and white, and what they refer to as chocolate – a sepia rich monochrome emulsion that seems particularly suited to darker skin tones. I decided to go with chocolate because it’s the only film unique to the 20x24 system. If I was to make this a completely original experience, I might as well go the whole nine yards.

Using only a single strobe, black seamless backdrop, and a large white reflector, our studio setup was ready to go. Naomi was just as anxious as I was to get started and she gleefully disrobed, jumping enthusiastically into the shooting space.

Looking at Naomi projected onto the camera’s ground glass I knew right away I had made the right choice in asking her to pose. She was a tall woman, with feminine curves in all the places they should be. Energetic and pleasing to the eye, her facial features where sharp, focused, and undeniably intriguing. She had the will, and the patience to experiment with poses, and a genuine desire to make the best image possible. A perfect match for this one-of-a-kind camera.

We started off with some classic poses all nude photographers should be deeply familiar with. An arched back, the body tucked into a fetal position, a wistful glance behind the shoulder…

I was expecting the camera to make some sort of noise when pushing down on the cable release but there was barely an audible click as the lens opened and closed at but a fraction of a second.

After each shot, Tracey would approach the camera and pull down the roll of exposed Polaroid film. Development time took a mere two minutes, but the anticipation to look at every image seemed like an eternity. Like smaller 4x5 Polaroid film, the 20x24 variety was a simple peel-apart process once development was complete. I could swear there was an audible gasp in the room after every image was revealed. Rich and textured, the prints looked more like an oil painting then a photograph.

It was time to up the ante a bit and make things really interesting.

“How about a scream?” said Naomi, “I’d love to scream on camera!”

I was hesitant at first for fear of turning the shoot into something cheesy looking. But Naomi seemed genuine so we decided to give it a go. It’s not everyday one sees a naked woman give out a blood curdling scream in the middle of a studio, but Naomi managed to pull it off. Even more importantly she had the lung capacity to belt it out and keep her body tense throughout the slow process of composing a shot with such a large an unwieldy instrument.

I pressed the cable release and the shutter gave us that familiar click. Tracey once again rushed forward and cut away the top of the film with a razor blade. We waited two minutes, peeled away the top layer, and this time the gasp was even louder. We had our shot – the perfect shot, the one that instantly made the whole experience worth it.

We experimented with a few more screaming poses but none quite equaled the spontaneity and honesty of the first. Such is the way of things sometimes.

What seemed so daunting and foreign at first was quickly turning into an exercise of familiarity. I could see now why the Polaroid 20x24 camera was so attractive to artists of all types. The camera was fun to use, and the huge instant prints felt rewarding in a way I had never experienced before as a photographer. I knew as the shoot was coming to a close that my entire outlook on photography as a whole had changed for the better.

The tear down process was just as easy as the setup. Tracey turned the overhead lights of the studio back on and Naomi, Michelle, and I took one last look at Ruby, knowing full well this would probably be the last time we would see this amazing camera in person. We said our goodbyes to Tracey and left him behind to close up the studio, a large role of over-sized prints under my arm and a huge smile on my face.