When I enter Rob Roth’s apartment, his table is covered in squares. Small square frames encase the Polaroid photographs he has been composing for almost a decade, which will soon be on view in his new exhibition “Happy Accidents,” opening July 9 at The Wild Project in New York. In fits of joy and flashes of sunlight, intricately placed glitter and gold leaf, and the occasional chemical fluke, the intricacies of Roth’s life appear, those he’s previously kept private. A lover bathed in the warm tones of a setting sun, a friend sparkling behind massive sunglasses, peeling wheatpaste posters. In one way, they’re fragmented poetry; in another, sacred objects, reliquaries; in yet another, an autobiography. “There’s something I think I’ve pushed myself into to keep myself sane in this realm we’re in right now,” Roth says, “so that I can remember what I am, who I am, and what I’m about, what I believe in, how my eye works, what has value to me.” 

This is work Roth has taken on as, as he quips, a side practice to his practice–in his other life, beyond “Happy Accidents,” he is the creative director for Blondie, with whom he’s worked for nearly 30 years. He is also a filmmaker, a theatremaker, and a performance artist. Listening to him talk feels like looking inside an atom–protons, neutrons, and electrons rushing about in a furor, except the force propelling him is creative energy. 

Roth emerged in the 1990s New York underground; that is, he was a co-founder of the party Click + Drag, a tech-themed, gender-bending nightlife event borne of the lauded downtown party, Jackie 60. For those who know, Click + Drag became legendary, a bastion of technological query that took the form of a wild, immersive nightlife event.

That he crafted as his cohort, similarly creative and rebellious individuals, should be no surprise. In fact, many of them appear in “Happy Accidents,” Debbie Harry, Parker Posey, Morgan Spector, Rebecca Hall, writer Wayne Koestenbaum, and the late, great fashion designer Pam Hogg among them. They are a part of this storytelling, too. “I’m putting a little highlight on the things I like…butts and lamps and Wayne and Parker…and old houses you can get killed in,” he laughs. 

The 45 Polaroids in “Happy Accidents” live in almost direct contrast to Roth’s other work, which is either largely fictive (theatre) or has to be so intricately planned that there can’t be any accidents (creative direction). But there’s almost no controlling a Polaroid; rather, there’s a certain giving over to it. One of the images Roth actually can’t identify, but has leaned into the question mark of it all, and added a firework of glitter. It’s not quite something you can do when designing the book cover for Debbie Harry’s memoir (which he did, for Face It, in 2019) or the cover of Blondie’s album No Exit. 

What’s driven Roth toward “Happy Accidents” is as much documentation as a dedication to taking up physical space–Roth sees the work as the opposite of social media, something to refute what he calls “a Kardashian haze.” It’s something that happens in an instant, and it’s not intended to last forever. “There’s nothing digital about this,” Roth says. “It’s all chemicals, and it’s one of a kind.” Plus, he had a desire to add his stamp to the art world in a way he hadn’t previously. Despite studying painting–which he maintains is essential for a visual education–and a lifetime of creating powerful visuals, Roth has made relatively few sojourns into the gallery world. “I don’t want to call it sidetracked; I just went another way,” he said. For many years, crafting installations at Click + Drag parties drove his creative work, which led to more work across nightlife and theatre. He also worked in graphic design and post-production. “I’m a visual artist too, just people forget, or I don’t push it,” he says. “But I thought, let’s push.” He’s in a moment, too, where he doesn’t feel like he has to worry about making work as himself. “I feel now that I may be safer–artist, gay–all these things I was never embarrassed about, but worried about, that it’s too much,” he says. 

The Polaroid work also became a way for Roth to process and preserve the world around him, to remind himself how far he had come from the beginning of his career. In one image of Parker Posey, the actress is getting ready for the Spring/Summer 2025 Valentino show they went to in Paris. It cements their time together. “I’ve known her for so long, and she basically said, ‘we’re going,’” Roth says. “It was one of the most perfect four days where we walked arm in arm through Paris…it was a really special moment for both of us to be like, we’re still here, we’re doing it. Let’s make the most of this, and really enjoy it.” Roth’s longstanding collaboration with Debbie Harry lives in the show in a few forms, particularly one where she wears a “Some Like it Hot” t-shirt Roth got in art school, with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe and a collection of pills. He was going to cut it up and sew it on a jacket for her, but then she put it on. He also took a Polaroid after he totaled his truck. “A deer ran in front. I went out. It was the weirdest thing. The bag didn’t go off. I felt like a bubble went around me. I was on a tree, and I was like, “What just happened?” he says. “I took a picture of the front of my truck, and it just became this abstraction that’s like, wow, that’s really great.” It was another happy accident (and luckily, he was fine).

The shapes Roth’s career has taken have consistently retained his artistic vision, one crafted in the underground, fed by nightlife, camp, a spirit of adventure and inquiry, and unending cool. Polaroids included.