"Psychology Today was the first client to commission me to do a Polaroid emulsion lift for a commercial assignment," explains Kah, a New York-based photographer whose portfolio includes commercial and editorial work for clients such as London Fog, Ernst & Young, Zoom and McCall's, as well as a substantial body of fine art photography. "We were documenting everyday objects used by psychologist B.F. Skinner in his lab at Harvard, and an art director thought that emulsion lift would add excitement to what could have been a boring tabletop shoot. It was great."

Early explorations
The technique of soaking Polaroid prints to remove the emulsion creates striking, translucent images that can be transferred to a wide variety of surfaces. After reading about emulsion lift in an issue of Test (a professional photography magazine formerly published by Polaroid and replaced by P magazine), Kah experimented with the technique in college. He picked it up again when he came to New York as a photographer's assistant in 1995.

"You can do so many different types of fine art images with Polaroid film," says Kah. "I knew that I wanted to go back to emulsion lift when I had the time."

His opportunity came when a photographer he had been assisting gave him some Polaroid Type 59 film. He used the film to explore the virtually limitless creative possibilities of emulsion lift.

"I had been doing some image transfer work, but I wanted to be able to transfer my images to any type of surface," Kah explains. "Emulsion lift is really great for that, so that's what I started doing."

In addition to transferring images onto watercolor paper, Kah experimented with a variety of other media, including rice paper, gold paper and metallic objects. Over the years, he has used emulsion lift extensively in his personal work, which typically involves images of people. He likes using Type 59 to photograph human subjects, noting that "its color is well-suited to people. It gives a soothing feeling."

Putting it all together
Kah added a new dimension to his work with emulsion lift when he sought a different treatment for an image he had created of a woman on a pedestal. He had cross-processed his original 6x7" transparency with C41 processing to increase contrast and grain in preparation for an emulsion lift. Before lifting the emulsion, however, Kah wanted to find a new way to extend the technique and add interest. His solution became his signature approach to emulsion lift.

Kah scanned his original image and segmented it digitally into 20 separate images. He did some color manipulation, and output each image onto Type 59 with a Polaroid ProPalette 8000 color film recorder. He then used the Type 59 images to create separate emulsion lifts, giving him a final image composed of 20 4x5" images.

"A photo appears two-dimensional," notes Kah. "Emulsion lift almost gives it a third dimension. And when you have 20 or 24 images together, it's all edges, like a puzzle."

Kah has since created a variety of composite emulsion lifts. Each typically begins with either a Polaroid PolaPan black-and-white slide - a film that Kah believes produces a "distinctive, timeless feel" when scanned - or a color negative. Kah usually adds either color or duotone electronically before outputting onto Type 59 and creating the individual emulsion lifts.

Kah's first composite emulsion lift - the image of the woman on the pedestal - received honorable mention in the 2000 Polaroid International Photography Awards. Kah's work has also won other impressive recognition. In fact, another of his composite emulsion lifts was selected for the 2002 annual edition of Graphis.

Technical tips
Kah believes that any photographer looking to experiment with emulsion lift should know the basics of the process, which are described in detail at www.polaroidwork.com/prophoto. He is also happy to offer some of his own observations, based on his own experience.

"While Polaroid recommends keeping images under hot water for four minutes, I sometimes leave them under water for less time than that. If you leave them too long, the gel peels away," he explains. "The goal is to keep as much gel as you can. That gives you your texture and movement. When I have the images under water, I often don't even look at the clock. I just get the feel of it."

He also believes that photographers should pay careful attention to image contrast when considering emulsion lift.

"Low-key images don't work as well with the technique for me," he notes. "When you're using darker images, less of the gel remains after you transfer the emulsion to watercolor paper. They're pretty permanent once they're transferred - you can't move them around as much."

As a result, Kah tends to shoot higher-key, or lighter, images when he's thinking about working with emulsion lift. But there's also another reason for his approach.

"To me, emulsion lift is about layers of transparency," he says. "You can transfer the emulsion to any kind of surface, and the lighter your image layer, the better you're able to see the surface onto which you're transferring."

 Looking ahead
Kah would definitely like to do more commercial work with emulsion lift, and some of his clients are doing their best to make it happen. Advertising agency Grey Worldwide, for example, gave Kah a one-man exhibition at its Manhattan headquarters in September 2001 to showcase not only his work with emulsion lift, but also with SX-70 manipulation - another Polaroid creative technique favored by Kah. The goal was to give Kah's work greater exposure among both agency clients and internal creative staff.

"I have two books that I show to potential clients - my Polaroid book, and my non-Polaroid book," notes Kah. "People always remember me by my Polaroid work. They look at my images and ask me whether they're paintings or photographs. People also want to know how I created them. The impact of these images is so strong that viewers tend to overlook my other work."

To help hesitant clients achieve their own breakthroughs and recognize the commercial potential of his work, Kah is producing a new series of emulsion lifts with a more editorial feel. Whatever the reaction, he knows that the effort will be well spent.

"Emulsion lift is a time- and labor-intensive process," he says. "But if you concentrate on what you're creating and know what you want at the end, it's worth all the hard work in between."

note: the process works quite well using the less expensive Polaroid HR6000SE/F film recorder, costing about $500, with its optional Pack Film Camera Back, costing about $60, and films such as Type 669, 691, etc.