In March of 1991, I visited my son's First Grade class at Gier Park Elementary in Lansing, Michigan, to do a show and tell of sorts. As I recall, it was supposed to be job related, but as I was supervising a photographic services unit at the time, that job would have been a bit difficult to explain, much less demonstrate, especially since so much of what we did wasn't quite in keeping with what five- and six-year-olds understood about photography, if they understood much about it at all. So I went as a photographer. Cameras and pictures, they probably could understand.
I brought in my Mamiya RB67 medium-format camera, with both my Polaroid back and a film back, along with one of my studio flash units with its umbrella. I also brought in an air shutter release bulb with twenty-foot-long tube so that the kids, along with their teacher, Mrs. Madeleine Shanahan, could each take a self-portrait using Polaroid 669 instant film.
The kids seemed to really enjoy the magic of it all. When everyone was done taking turns, I did a group photograph of the class and Mrs. Shanahan.
It might have dissapointed them slightly, but I took all the Polaroids home with me so that I could create the above assemblage, but I gave them all to Zachary (in the red striped shirt at the back) the next day so that he could distribute them to everyone. (All these years later, I wish I'd taken the picture from directly above the assemblage.) I recently got in touch with the mother of one of Zachary's classmates and she told me that her daughter still has her Polaroid. You can't believe how happy that made me.
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