Annegret Soltau is a German visual artist. Her work marks a fundamental reference point in the art of the 1970s and 1980s. Photomontages of her own body and face sewn over or collaged with black thread are the most well-known works done by her.

Contact sheets:

For the images I took, I was looking for a more portrait like pictures. I had the subjects look directly into the camera at some points, look away at others, do different facial expressions to give me some sort of variety when it came to choosing the images I was going to use for the photo-montage. I didn’t get too many images but I defiantly got enough to be able to use for my final piece for the response to Annegret Soltau, however many of them were either too over-exposed or blurry.

Chosen images to create photo-montage:

 

I chose this for the base image because it has a calm tone to it compared to the other pictures – here the subject is just staring into the camera, a picture which is perfect for my response to the photographer as she uses a normal base image too.

I chose this image because I wanted to use the subject’s mouth, as in one of Soltau’s work, she has an image of someone’s open mouth covering someone’s face, so I wanted to replicate that aspect.

And for the final image, I chose this one because I was interested in using the mouth and the eyes. Unlike Soltau’s work that i’m getting inspiration from, I’m using two mouths to add a bit of a quirk to it.

How I did it:

To change my work into a response to Annergret Soltau, I first went and printed out my chosen final images which I would be using for the photo-montage piece. I then went and ripped each image of the subjects up into calculated pieces,  and then arranged them into weird and quirky ways which still resembles a person, and then took black thread and sewed them together to create the unique look of Soltau’s work.

This is a picture of the final piece of the photo-montage in repsonse to Annegret Soltau . I got to this point and was thinking about stopping here as I liked the arrangement of the eye and mouths, and was deciding whether or not adding hands would be too much or would complete the final piece. Originally, I wanted to add both of the eyes instead of just one but it would have looked like too much and too messy if I had done that, and in the end I decided not to add the hands for that exact same reason.

I like my final outcome as I believe it portrays Soltau’s work perfectly. I used the same black thread to sew the pieces together, I took images of different body parts of a person and stuck them in ways which makes them unrecognizable but still obvious that it’s a human. I also believe that the images I chose for this project were appropriate for my aim and I put together the pieces well. I like the placement of the eye and mouths as I believe it gives it a bit of a unique and interesting look. However, I’m not too keen on the messiness of the threads, I believe I could have made it look more neater and made each thread look more even. I also dislike the fact that I didn’t edit the images before hand. I believe that I should have made one or two of the images into a black and white version to give a bit of an edge to the final piece, or I should have at least adjusted the brightness and exposure on all the of the images before hand.

I quite enjoyed making this piece, it was practical but it didn’t demand too much hard work, time and materials. However, choosing the right images and pieces from those images was a bit tricky, as I had to choose which ones would suit the original image without making that part the center of attention.