Last Vestiges is a project that was (and is) very close to me, and it came about almost by accident. Back in 2016 I found an old Polaroid (The Impossible Project)* I’d thrown away months earlier. It had been rained on, baked in the sun, attacked by mould, and half buried in the garden. When I picked it up again, it looked nothing like the picture I’d originally taken. The emulsion had blistered, scarred, and taken on these eerie textures. When I scanned it at high resolution, I suddenly saw strange new landscapes inside it, skies that reminded me of Turner paintings, folds like crumpled silk, and ghostly horizons. That discovery became the seed for 'Last Vestiges'.
I started deliberately experimenting. I buried Polaroids with bits of corroded metal, soaked them in milk, left them out in frost, or exposed them to extreme heat. The results were unpredictable sometimes nothing happened, sometimes the picture just turned to mud. But every so often, the decay created something extraordinary. The original subject a tree line, a building, a street corner would all but vanish, leaving behind strange textures, rich colors, and marks that looked almost like abstract paintings.
For me, the project is about letting go of control and allowing nature to become a collaborator. I spent years in photography and model-making, where everything had to be precise and nothing left to chance. 'Last Vestiges' is the opposite. it’s about seeing what happens when time, weather, and decay take over. Each Polaroid feels like an artefact, a trace of what was once there but has since been changed forever.
I called the series 'Last Vestiges' because that’s what the images are fragments, remnants of something that’s gone. But they’re also reborn as something new. They remind me of the bombed out ruins I played in as a child in South London in the 1950s, where nature would creep back into the cracks and broken walls. There’s a beauty in that kind of decay, in the way ruin itself becomes a kind of creation.
I scanned each print so viewers can see the textures up close the cracks, the mould patterns, the little details you’d never notice otherwise. People often mistake the enlargements for abstract paintings, and I like that. It blurs the line between photography and something more tactile.
For me, 'Last Vestiges' is both nostalgic and liberating. It connects back to my lifelong fascination with ruins and the passage of time, but it also frees me from trying to control every outcome. It shows that even when a photograph “fails,” it can still become something meaningful, perhaps even more alive than before.
Download a PDF copy of Last vestiges that includes all of the images from the link at the top of the page.
This following interview is an abridged version of an articlle by Michael Behlen and was originally published in PRYME Editions on September 17th, 2017 at the launch of a limited edition for sale in the USA.
Graeme Webb is a London-based model maker, artist and photographer, he trained as a darkroom technician in the early 1970s. He worked in architectural and commercial photography & film before leaving the industry in 1983 to pursue a career in IT project management. He returned to media in 2002 as a consultant, and by 2006 had begun creating the miniature, meticulously staged photographic worlds for which he is better known for. Built from scratch in scales ranging from 1:87 to 1:6, his sets collapse the distinctions between inside and outside, human order and natural entropy. Lit with torches and LEDs, and enhanced with mist, smoke, or projection, they are captured in-camera without Photoshop manipulation. Webb’s small-scale worlds have featured in animations, album covers, and ornate cabinet dioramas commissioned by corporate clients. His exhibitions include group & solo shows in London’s Barbican, Cottons Center, Holborn Studios, Linear House, the Strand Gallery, and Galerie Huit in France. He has also run workshops at 4D Model Shop, Saint Mary-le-Strand Church (with Nick Cobb), and the Apple Store in Covent Garden (to be featured in a future article).
In 2016 Webb returned to his long-stored Polaroid cameras, integrating instant film into his practice. An accidental discovery that year became the foundation for his Last Vestiges – The Exhumed Project. After discarding a failed Impossible Project print, he later found it weathered by months outdoors, its emulsion scarred, blistered, and alive with mould. Scanned at high resolution, the ruined print revealed ghostly landscapes of silk-like textures and Turneresque skies. Webb began deliberately experimenting, burying film with metal, soaking it in milk, or exposing it to extreme temperatures, allowing nature to reshape the image. The process, he notes, is as much about surrender as control: a collaboration with decay.
Last Vestiges presents the fragments of images both destroyed and reborn, where remnants of the original subject haunt newly formed worlds. Published under his Arcimboldi Press imprint, the book combines Webb’s photographic experiments with his skills as a bookmaker and binder. PRYME Editions released a special run in the U.S., while Webb continues to produce small editions and hand bound volumes through his Etsy shop and the Photographers Gallery (all editions now sold out).
For Webb, the project connects to lifelong fascinations: childhood explorations of post war ruins in south London, the patina of time, and the interplay of nature and human construction. His images sit comfortably between abstraction and documentation, embraced by instant film communities and appreciated by collectors as large scale prints.
Alongside Last Vestiges, Webb continues to expand his practice through collaborative projects, including The London Sessions with Trevor Crone, stereo photography around Borough Market in London, and multimedia experiments with instant film. Whether through dioramas or decayed Polaroids, his work explores what remains when time and entropy have their way and how ruin itself can become a kind of creation.
* The Impossible Project was launched in 2008 after Polaroid announced it would stop making instant film. A small group of enthusiasts stepped in to buy Polaroid’s last factory in Enschede, Netherlands, and set about reinventing the film from scratch using new chemistry and materials. The early results were unpredictable but celebrated for their experimental characteri mages that felt ghostly, fragile, and painterly. Over time, Impossible refined its formulas, and by 2017 the company rebranded itself simply as Polaroid, bringing the iconic name and instant photography culture full circle into a new era.
©️2025 Graeme Webb.
©️2017 Michael Behlen & Pryme Editions.
More on the subjects of Diorama building and Polaroids later this year.
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