Polaroid snaps by Sir Peter Blake are going on show for the first time in Newcastle this weekend. David Whetstone talked to the artist about his brush with instant photography

DISTINGUISHED artist Sir Peter Blake is paying a flying visit to Newcastle tomorrow for the first public viewing of his exhibition of signed Polaroid photos, exclusively on display at the Opus Gallery, Gosforth.

Yesterday he explained how he got involved with a brand of instant photography that smacks of a different age.

In the 1960s and 70s, Polaroid instant photos were like magic. In February last year, Polaroid said it was ceasing production of the film in the face of the digital revolution.

“The gallery in Newcastle, Opus, asked me to do it,” said Sir Peter from the London studio he has occupied since 1997.

“I think they invited Marc Quinn first and invited me as the second artist to do it. The project was to take 100 Polaroids as a piece of art.”

The avuncular artist, still best known as a founding father of pop art, said he had been using Polaroids since the 1970s, mostly for recording information in the studio. “I can remember painting a portrait and just taking a photograph of someone’s ear,” he recalled.

On this occasion, though, armed with his precious consignment of Polaroid film – a fast-diminishing world resource – he set about taking pictures of his surroundings.

“Most of the pictures were taken around my studio, so it’s almost a kind of walk around the studio without having to visit it,” he said.

Actually, this was not Sir Peter’s first Polaroid project. A couple of years ago, he said, he undertook a project in homage to a famous American photographer, Walker Evans, who died (in 1975) before he was able to complete an alphabet featuring photos of letters found randomly in the environment.

“As a homage I picked up on it. I did an alphabet from letters in my studio – so I had used the medium before Opus suggested it.” The Opus project, he believed, was to mark “the death throes” of the old Polaroid instant film now the manufacturer had moved into the digital era. Sir Peter, most widely known as the creator of The Beatles’ famous Sgt Pepper album sleeve, has used all sorts of media in his long career.

He is known particularly for using “found objects” which are literally that – old cigarette packets and bits and pieces which to an artist’s magpie eye are more than just rubbish.