Stuart Woodman - Now We Are 30

Stuart Woodman

Now We Are 30 - limited edition book

Stuart Woodman was kind enough to send me a copy of his latest book Now We Are 30, which he made in celebration of his 30th birthday, or in this case, his 30th year. To mark the year, he made a Polaroid sx-70 everyday for one year. This booklet contains a selection of 36 of these images.

We’ve all had them: good days, bad days, in-between days, days where the light shines brightly through the curtain and all you can think is, “I don’t want to get up”. Days where the girl leaves. Days where she comes back. Days where the sun clatters off the pavement, where the leaves fall, where everything is perfect – days you want, even if you don’t know why, or how, to hold onto forever.

Now We Are 30 is a selection of the best (and worst) of those days. A series of Polaroid images charting one year in the life of Stuart Woodman: a year of change; of breakup; of new beginnings and strange places. But also, like any other year, of the mundane and minute. Using the un-editable immediacy of a Polaroid, Woodman tracks the big and little things of his life, adhering to a strict policy of “one day, one image”: days of moving cities, of failing relationships, of new beginnings. This book – poignant, moving, reflective, grainily beautiful – is the result.

from the publishers homepage, Doubleplusgood.

Sometimes its disappointing to see Polaroids larger than their original size as they seem to loose something of their tactile quality and just become unsharp, soupy color images. Stuart has done a great job of keeping the feel by actually printing the entire Polaroid, including not only the white boarders but manages to print the rippled pattern of the white film base. Its hard to describe, best hold it in your hands sometime.

Don't sweat it Stuart. They say that 30 is the new 20...

here is the best place to get them.