Robby Müller

From the late 1940s on, the American firm Polaroid developed various techniques for instant photography. In 1974 the first fully automatic instant camera came on the market, the SX-70. This camera plays an important role in the film Alice in the Cities, made by Wenders and Müller in 1974. Robby Müller has continued to take Polaroid pictures ever since, sometimes while working on a film, as a way of studying light and composition. He photographed hotel rooms as well as painterly still lifes, abstract patterns of light, reflections and urban landscapes. He also frequently experimented, for example by photographing during difficult lighting conditions, with contre-jour, or in situations that combine twilight and artificial light in a single image. The Polaroid pictures by Robby Müller show how he “thinks” photographically with colour, light, shadow and composition, and reveal his photographic vision, which is a hallmark of his films.