The New York Times: POSSESSED; Letting Fate Take the Picture

By David Colman

''WHEN I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy,'' Andy Warhol wrote in ''The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).'' ''I just can't believe that people are still pregnant.''

 

That was in 1975. In 2003, Jessica Craig-Martin finds the fact even more appalling. Ms. Craig-Martin, the art-cum-fashion photographer whose often unflattering, paparazzi-style photos of night-life warriors bring to mind a strange mix of Warhol, Weegee and Dian Fossey, has become painfully familiar with the realities of incipient single motherhood, with three weeks more to go as host to what feels like a gorilla in her midst.

''This is way too ridiculous, this ludicrous shape I've become,'' she said last week. ''It's hideously low tech. It feels very old-fashioned. It seems very odd that the instant gratification part hasn't been sorted out.''

 

Ms. Craig-Martin is not terribly nostalgic for life in sepia tones. And any feeling she has for low-tech charm extends back only as far as the 1970's. To be precise, to that triumph of instant gratification, the Polaroid SX-70.

 

While she is not a photographer who uses digital cameras or Adobe Photoshop (or even sets and lighting), Ms. Craig-Martin acknowledges that in her own way she is ''a total control freak.'' The SX-70, she said, utterly short-circuits the drive to control.

 

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June 29, 2003