Polly Borland’s portraits—provocative, surreal, and unflinching—are unforgettable in our collective cultural memory—Queen Elizabeth II, Nick Cave, Cate Blanchett…

We met in London in 1992 where I began my career, assisting Polly. That grew into decades-long friendship and still I am captivated by how she conjures the uncanny with such effect, how she distorts and reveals, in the same moment, the psychological layers. As we two women navigated image-making, I watched Polly claim her space through invention and risk.

In 1995, I first photographed her—one roll of black-and-white film, daylight, no artifice. Thirty years later, reflecting on the strangeness she’s already mastered, I chose drama, clarity. 

This, my new portrait is homage and exchange, intimate and engaged. Polly costumed as a silhouette beneath flying cape conjures the super-heroic, the oracle, trickster—all herself.

In the quiet studio, with light honed to the exact timbre of our friendship, we built this portrait in awareness of beloved past technologies; originally shot on negative, I scanned the film, retouched, leaving tape marks intact as evidence of process, then made negatives and printed them in the darkroom.

This portrait is not a mirror—it is a myth unfolding. Polly, radiant.

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Bronwyn Kidd

2025

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