By Leo Whitman
Coltin Fazzio is making waves (and great art) in Colorado with Polaroids. Leading up to the release of his line of shirts, we sat down for an interview with the artrepreneur himself to talk about his process.
So you started officially in photography.
Yeah, officially.
Just a pretty run of the mill photography class — nothing crazy.
CF: And I didn’t do any art until freshman year of college.
Wow.
Yeah I never did any of that, I took photography in high school, and I didn’t know what I wanted to take photos of at all — I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just knew I didn’t want to work in a suit in an office.
That was the primary motivation?
After that, I had no idea. So I took an anthropology class and a few other courses — Philosophy really helped me.
In what way?
Growing up, I was horrible at reading and would just get distracted all the time. Philosophy was the first reading I like slowed down and made sure I understood it. It’s not like you can necessarily do a whole career in philosophy, but it let me know that there are options out there. I took a darkroom photo class during my freshman year and I loved it. I was horrible at it technically — like technically I am so slow. But, visually, I could see things, and I just loved what you can put in the camera. You know. So much different than what you see. And so it wasn’t until probably like the second darkroom class I took that I really understood F Stops, Aperture, and that sort of thing.
The whole thing —
Once that caught up with what I was trying to show visually, then it became very addictive. My sophomore year, I was still at UCD I took a class where we were using a digital camera. That helped me a lot to find a style and find what I want to phonograph.
Because you can manipulate and make mistakes —
Yeah. You can photograph like you could take like a thousand shots a night. I was mostly following my friends around at like eighteen, nineteen years old — when I went back to film, that’s when I really understood framing. With film, you only have like 36 [exposures] in a roll, so you have to think about it a little bit.
So when you do these designs — Are you using actual Polaroid film? Or are you using 35-millimeter and cropping them?
I’d say like 90 percent of them are polaroids. I didn’t get into polaroids until probably like 3-4 years ago. It was like the last camera I learned. — I had my style at that point. I understood framing, I understood the functions of the camera. So the Polaroid on the surface is like the easiest to operate. But you still have to think about framing — and there are only eight shots. I love that there’s only [eight] — You don’t want to fuck it up, you know?
I think in some ways, it’s in my mind, actually Polaroids are some of the most technically challenging.
They could be just because there is so little control — I was learning how to manipulate things with Polaroid [film]. Like [polaroid] say to “put it in a dark place for 30 minutes” so I would just take it out after 10 minutes and then on the back of the Polaroid, there’s a little pocket on the bottom of the backside of it. And that’s where the developer is. And I learned that when Polaroid went out of business and
Oh, wow.
Because it will slowly just keep going and then, you know over time the colors in the image will change — I have seen them change and they are pretty unflattering.
Oh, interesting. Okay. So you cut the bottom of the actual Polaroid.
The bottom, the backside of it on the very bottom is a little pouch, and so I cut that, and it stops the developer.
Now it’s. Interesting. So then it right but then you can just reassemble it if you’re scanning it or what have you.
I could take a polaroid in the middle of the day, really sunny. And then like five or six minutes after taking it I’ll take get it out and cut it, it will look like you took it in the middle of the night.
That’s really cool — what are the projects you got going on right now? What are some of the things you’ve got going on like right now?
Right now, I’m building my website for clothes — I just bought my domain for the e-commerce site where people can order the shirt, and pay for it online — So that would be a big step. Up until now, I’ve been doing a lot of one-off with prints on. Just to see how they look.
Small batch kind of thing —
You know you maybe two or three — there’s a store in town I’ll give them to, and they will sell them.
What’s the store?
It’s called Spectra Art Space. This one and they’re planning a show for me, but we don’t have any dates yet, so that will be awesome — The website that’s going to take a while. But that will give me another avenue to sell them.
Do you make anything else?
Right now it’s just shirts but I’m hopefully be trying to expand to stickers, and trying to expand to other items of clothing —
Yeah.
Getting it introduced to the public and have it as kind of a symbol. So that they can kind of digest it a little, I think it’s better to go that way than just to throw a bunch of shit at people.
You have to add context; first, people have to know what it is — So you want to go more towards the clothing side of this then — or do you want to have like both galleries shows, clothing, like where’s the grand vision?
I mean, I think one day it would be great to have both. You know, when I first got out of school, there were two galleries that started to show my work. One is in L.A., and one is in like New York — I’ll take like just a single Polaroid. And I’ll blow it up to three and a half by four feet. Then I’ll get it framed, and they will sell it for me. But what I learned from that is you know it’s hit or miss. I can make like a bunch of money in like two or three months and then not see any money for a while. So I was trying to think of a different avenue. I don’t just rely on that. I always liked clothing and that way you can get one image out to a whole bunch of different people in a pretty affordable way. And a shirt is such great advertising. And to get people’s opinions because if someone likes it, they will just come up to you and say it, and where they can get it — So you get feedback back that way.
