Robby Müller - L.A. Polaroids

In the 1980s, the acclaimed Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller spent months at a time away from home, collaborating with renowned directors such as Alex Cox and Wim Wenders to create some of the decade’s most influential films such as Repo Man, Paris, Texas, Barfly and To Live and Die in L.A..

After long days on set, Müller stayed at the Kensington Motel in Santa Monica, a simple apartment hotel just behind Ocean Boulevard and steps from the beach. He liked its plain comforts: an ironing board folded into the wall, a coffee pot bubbling on the stove, Garfield the hotel cat who kept him company. It felt familiar, not just a place to pass through. 

He always carried his SX-70 Polaroid camera, making tender images when work paused, bringing what William Friedkin called “a foreigner’s eye” to America: noticing details others missed, avoiding clichés, always returning to light and colour as his true subjects. In these Polaroids, Müller frames a Los Angeles that no longer exists: small rooms, edges of the beach, street corners, a city built for cars seen by a cinematographer who preferred to walk. They reveal a man far from home, looking for stillness and light in the spaces in between.

Edited and with an introduction by Andrea Müller-Schirmer; designed by Linda van Deursen and expertly printed in Italy and bound as a uniquely flexible chopped linen soft-back, silk screened in a sun-kissed orange, it carries the warmth of Müller’s Los Angeles. Alongside Müller’s images are texts from his collaborators, including directors Alex Cox and Wim Wenders, and actor Willem Dafoe.

"What impressed me was he would see what no one saw – the origin, the presence, the vibration, the possibility of what was already there..." - Willem Dafoe  

"He had an eye for the light that the camera, and its film, loved." - Wim Wenders 

Robby Müller was born in Curaçao in 1940 and grew up in Indonesia and the Netherlands. He studied at the Netherlands Film Academy in the early Sixties and later worked in Germany, where he met Wim Wenders. Together they made Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road, and Paris, Texas, establishing one of the key visual relationships in modern cinema.

From the late Seventies onward Müller worked widely, shooting films for Peter Bogdanovich, William Friedkin, and Barbet Schroeder. His long collaboration with Jim Jarmusch led to Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train, and Dead Man. In the Nineties he worked with Lars von Trier on Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, exploring new approaches to handheld and digital filmmaking. He also worked with visual artists, including Steve McQueen on Carib’s Leap for Documenta 11.

Alongside his film work Müller made a large body of Polaroids. Many were taken between shoots, often in hotel rooms or while walking in unfamiliar cities. They track his ongoing study of light, shadow, and composition, and echo the quiet spatial awareness found in his film work.
Müller died in Amsterdam in 2018.

Texts by Alex Cox / Willem Dafoe / Barbara Scharres / Andrea Müller-Schirmer / Wim Wenders

2025
30 x 24 cm
96 pages
Linen Covered / Case Bound / Silk screened 
ISBN: 9781913288884

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