Kent Hall – ‘she said’

Kent Hall (@windsorknot on Instagram and Twitter, and stop what you’re doing and go follow him NOW) is doing incredible, inspirational, wonderful things with Instax and Polaroid, grease pencil, marker, chalk, cardboard, stamps, paint, and various other media. I’m a fan and (secretly) jealous, want to find some way to do some things like that, but in my own way and without copying him.

‘she said’ is one of his few open edition works (the vast majority are unique objects or very limited editions), and collects short statements Kent composed and typed onto expired Impossible Project polaroids. You can order a copy from MagCloud, and I managed to get this one direct from Hall, who sold a few and contributed proceeds to a food bank in Alameda County, CA, so mine came with a few goodies: a nice, handwritten note; one of Hall’s “business cards,” an Instax print with his name and contact info typed on; and a custom illustrated envelope. GoGo.

The zine is great. “She” (a figment of Hall’s creative imagination) says some fabulous things, and is quite cynical. For Hall, “she emerged: disembodied, frank, detached, nihilistic. A short-attention-span beatnik. I liked her.” I like her too.

“Only dummies,” she said. “know a thing about love.”

“I don’t know nothing about art,” she said. “Not even what I like.”

“Sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know what from what.”

The type written words rarely have much of anything to do with the image they’re typed on, as if “she” impatiently grumbles these aphorisms to Hall as he pauses to photograph. And the faded, mid-period Impossible Project film—before it got really pretty good, and long before it became Polaroid—with its muted and shifted colors work brilliantly with it.

‘she said’ is one of the only things I’ve ever rated 5 stars. Only Allah is perfect, after all. But between the personalization (decorated envelope, unique business card, etc.) and because I just really appreciate what Hall is doing with instant media and collage, here we are. Go follow him on Twitter or Instagram, maybe visit MagCloud and order up one or more of his open edition zines and maybe check on his website from time to time.* He’s doing some great things.

*At time of writing, Safari and Firefox refused to load his site. The WaybackMachine crawled it back in April 2021, so it was live then.