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This purchase is for one 20-minute portfolio review conducted via zoom with Michael Behlen.
Biography:
Michael Behlen is a photographer, curator, and publisher whose practice is grounded in metaphysical and mystical inquiry, exploring perception, temporality, and presence. He approaches photography as a contemplative discipline rather than a documentary act, treating the medium as a phenomenological instrument capable of registering stillness, uncertainty, and internal awareness. Drawing from transcendentalist, existential, and mystical traditions, Behlen situates image-making as a slow, ritualized engagement where meaning emerges through attention, surrender, and patience rather than spectacle or immediacy. In this sense, his work resists the acceleration and disposability of contemporary visual culture.
Behlen’s work is deeply tied to the material and conceptual constraints of Polaroid instant film. Its finite frames, volatile chemistry, and unrepeatable prints resonate with his engagement with impermanence and the passage of time. Rather than overcoming these limitations, he embraces them as essential to the work itself: chemical drift, streaking, and unplanned marks become expressive devices that emphasize ephemerality and unpredictability. Each print functions as a contemplative object, transforming photography into a ritualized engagement with both the world and the self.
Behlen’s Polaroid photography has appeared in publications including Diffusion Magazine, Fraction Magazine, Seities Magazine, and Polaroid Now (Chronicle Books, 2021). He has self-published two Polaroid photobooks — Searching for Stillness, Vol. 1 and I Was a Pioneer. His third book, Searching for Stillness Vol. II, was published in 2020 by Static Age. His forthcoming self-published Polaroid zine, Where the Water Waits, will be released in July 2026.
Connect with Michael Behlen on his Website and on Instagram!
This purchase is for one 20-minute portfolio review conducted via zoom with Michael Behlen.
Biography:
Michael Behlen is a photographer, curator, and publisher whose practice is grounded in metaphysical and mystical inquiry, exploring perception, temporality, and presence. He approaches photography as a contemplative discipline rather than a documentary act, treating the medium as a phenomenological instrument capable of registering stillness, uncertainty, and internal awareness. Drawing from transcendentalist, existential, and mystical traditions, Behlen situates image-making as a slow, ritualized engagement where meaning emerges through attention, surrender, and patience rather than spectacle or immediacy. In this sense, his work resists the acceleration and disposability of contemporary visual culture.
Behlen’s work is deeply tied to the material and conceptual constraints of Polaroid instant film. Its finite frames, volatile chemistry, and unrepeatable prints resonate with his engagement with impermanence and the passage of time. Rather than overcoming these limitations, he embraces them as essential to the work itself: chemical drift, streaking, and unplanned marks become expressive devices that emphasize ephemerality and unpredictability. Each print functions as a contemplative object, transforming photography into a ritualized engagement with both the world and the self.
Behlen’s Polaroid photography has appeared in publications including Diffusion Magazine, Fraction Magazine, Seities Magazine, and Polaroid Now (Chronicle Books, 2021). He has self-published two Polaroid photobooks — Searching for Stillness, Vol. 1 and I Was a Pioneer. His third book, Searching for Stillness Vol. II, was published in 2020 by Static Age. His forthcoming self-published Polaroid zine, Where the Water Waits, will be released in July 2026.
Connect with Michael Behlen on his Website and on Instagram!