This unidentified artist is behind a collection of around 950 Polaroids discovered in New York in the spring of 2012. “Type 42” refers to the film used: a Polaroid film introduced to the market in 1955 and discontinued in 1992. The images mainly consist of portraits of actresses—sometimes distorted, slightly blurred, or pixelated—captured from television broadcasts.
In most cases, the actress’s name is written at the bottom of the photograph; sometimes the title of the film or series—often science fiction or B-movies—also appears at the top. On 31 of them, the artist added the subject’s measurements at the top. Occasionally, the edges of the screen can be seen as a framing device, but in most cases they are absent from the image.