Instant Happy: Lost and Found Polaroids 

Instant Happy: Lost and Found Polaroids

Opening reception Friday, Sept. 11.

In the past two decades, Curtis Cates has collected more than 1,500 Polaroids. And in a project that began in 2024, Cates, his wife and collaborator, Cindy Connolly, along with friend and writer David Bjerklie, selected images for this show. It was a process that took more than a year; the sheer variety of the images made selection a daunting, but fascinating challenge.

How do photographs shape our perceptions of the passage of time? How much of a photo’s value is intent, how much is context, how much is interpretation? As Cates, Connolly, and Bjerklie began to compare and evaluate which images were “best” or “most interesting,” they found there were no simple answers. Photos that one week were immediately put into the “absolutely must include” category would often be reconsidered and moved into the “probably not” category. And vice versa. It seemed like a crazily arbitrary project at times.  But that probably should not have been a surprise, given the nature of the images. In the Q&A that accompanies this exhibition, Cates and Connolly make this point perfectly; above all, their aim is to stimulate conversation and new perspectives on what can be seen in the most ordinary of snapshots.

Curtis Wade Cates, a native of Lubbock, Texas, is a musician, street photographer, collector of street art, amateur archivist and former network news crew member. He has been a documentary producer (Peace Through Understanding: The 1964/65 New York World’s Fair, Tex and Gene); public access TV producer and star (Hillbilly Peckers’ Barbecue TV Hour); and video editor (Ramones: Around the World, Kelly Lamb’s Geisha Girl and Origami). He co-created video support for such exhibits as Margot Fonteyn in America: A Celebration at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, Ukulele Fever and Pedal to the Metal: A History of Children’s Pedal Cars, Stamford Art Museum, and Milt Hinton: A Memorial Exhibition of His Jazz Photographs 1938-86, Flushing Town Hall). Curtis also co-curated a show on art and industry at the 1964/65 World’s Fair for the Queens Museum of Art and restored and archived episodes of Marc Miller and Paul Tshinkel’s ART/new york interviews with such artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring. In 2012, Curtis co-curated The Coloring Book at Manhattan’s ABC No Rio. More than 100 artists interpreted pages of a Masterpieces coloring book which Curtis had found on a radiator in the Lower East Side building where he lived.

Cindy Connolly Cates, native of Omaha, has worked as a newspaper reporter, as well as for Time Inc. publications in New York City and People Inc. in Des Moines. She is currently focusing primarily on book editing projects. In 2023, Cates and Connolly curated the Rodeo Coloring Book exhibit at the Old Feed Store gallery in Bassett, Nebraska, an homage to the late rodeo rider Casey Jochem.

David Bjerklie grew up in North Dakota and since 1984 has been a reporter, writer and editor for TIME Magazine, TIME For Kids, and TIME Special Editions. He has written on a broad range of science, environment and medicine topics, with special emphasis in recent years on mental health, language, animal intelligence, the nature of hope, the character of facts, and the psychology of being wrong. He has been a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at M.I.T., a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow, two-time grant recipient at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings in Germany, and a National Science Foundation Media Fellow at McMurdo and South Pole Stations in Antarctica. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.