Chiaroscuro, (from Italian: chiaro, “light,” and scuro, “dark”) technique employed in the visual arts to represent light and shadow as they define three-dimensional objects.
Some evidence exists that ancient Greek and Roman artists used chiaroscuro effects, but in European painting the technique was first brought to its full potential by Leonardo da Vinci in the late 15th century in such paintings as his Adoration of the Magi (1481). Thereafter, chiaroscuro became a primary technique for many painters, and by the late 17th century the term was routinely used to describe any painting, drawing, or print that depended for its effect on an extensive gradation of light and darkness.
In its most dramatic form—as in the works of those Italian artists of the 17th century who came under the influence of Caravaggio—it was known as tenebrismo, or tenebrism. Caravaggio and his followers used a harsh, dramatic light to isolate their figures and heighten their emotional tension. Another outstanding master of chiaroscuro was Rembrandt, who used it with remarkable psychological effect in his paintings, drawings, and etchings. Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, and many other, lesser painters of the Baroque period also used chiaroscuro to great effect. The delicacy and lightness of 18th-century Rococo painting represents a rejection of this dramatic use of chiaroscuro, but the technique again became popular with artists of the Romantic period, who relied upon it to create the emotive effects they considered essential to their art.
Some examples of Chiaroscuro lighting
Chiaroscuro Lighting Technique and How It Works
There are lots of ways you can add depth to your shot - you can place objects in the foreground and background, use a shallow depth of field, or employ the parallax effect. But chiaroscuro is one method you should know and use every time your shoot involves lighting.
In essence, this lighting technique seems simple enough -- use dimmer and brighter lights in opposing succession to create contrast (light/dark), however you'll soon find out, when handling such unwieldy things as lights, that it's true what they say: cinematography is basically painting with light -- and painting ain't no easy task.
I created a mood board to show some examples of chiaroscuro lighting:
Martha Rosler is an American artist. She works in photography and photo text, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler’s work is centred on everyday life and the public sphere, often with an eye to women’s experience. Recurrent concerns are the media and war, as well as architecture and the built environment, from housing and homelessness to places of passage and systems of transport.
The work of hers that appeals to me is her photomontage work. The reason for this is that it has a message, the images aren’t just face value they are trying to make a statement. Sometimes the statement that she is trying to make is slightly controversial.
What she does it either takes or obtains images and then overlays parts of hem on-top on on another normally making it look obvious that she has done it, she doesn’t try to hide the fact that she has made adjustments to the images.
My thought is to try and make something that imitates the “visit Jersey” adverts, the reason that I am going to do this is that I already have a large selection of images that are of Jersey land marks and ‘Quintessentially’ Jersey things. Therefore I will find a landscape of a castle or something that is clearly from Jersey and then overlay somethings like Cows and surfers.
The cow and the landscape are my images and the other two are taken from the Jersey tourism, my plan is to use the landscape as the background and then cut the cow out and put it on the right of the image. I will also cut out the surfer and put him is the small puddle at the landscape. Finally I will use the magic wand tool and get rid of the background of the logo.
Frida Kahlo de Rivera born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon; 6 July 1907 – 13 July ) was a Mexican artist who painted many portraits, self-portraits and works inspired by the nature and artefacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, post colonialism, gender, class and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist.
My Response
Within my response I wanted to incorporate her idea of portraying the taboo topics within society and beauty standards. People expect to look like models and Instagram posers so they go to extreme lengths to achieve this programmed look.
In my shoot I used a younger model due to the standards being passed down to even younger generations than before. I then incorporated Frida’ natural look he had. Through some research I found that during the Roman Empire Era, facial hair on women was a sign of intelligence and nobility. In a way, Frida reflected these traits whilst going against her modern day standards.
Final Images
Analysis
VISUAL
Within these images I wanted my main focus to be my model but not have a plain background. Within Kahlo’s paintings shes depicted infront of either shrubbery or a earthy coloured background. So, i put my model in front of a field to capture the nature as well as the model.
TECHNICAL
In order to create my blurred background, I firstly set my cameras depth of field so that it only focused on my model, then once i began processing the image my background wasn’t blurred enough so I used the Photoshop blurring tool so that only my model was in focus. As far as lighting goes, I only used natural light.
Before responding to the Identity and Place stimulus I am experimenting with extra prints that I can generate with a successful Photomontage print. To do this I am scratching into and pinning the Photomontage print.
Scratching
Below shows me starting to scratch into the print. I started out by using the needle end of a compass to scratch in between the lines of the print for effect. I later moved onto using a Stanley knife to cut thinner lines in and generate different marks on the page.
Scratching into print
Experimenting with Pins
Below shows my experimenting with different arrangement of placing the pins around her head and also around her jewellery. I also generated experiments of pushing the pins in different lengths some in further and some sticking far out of the page.
For some other experiments with the idea of lines I decided to experiment with photoshop and generating lines in this way.
I used the line tool on photoshop to generate the lines and developed 3 different outcomes, one using a picture I generated in photomontage experiments with the string and threading while the other two I used images from the studio portraits I generated.
Screenshot Of Working
I also cropped the images more If I felt it could be helpful and I tried to try out 3 different ways of generating lines, for the photomontage experiment I crossed the lines over in the shapes that had been created by the lines, I redid the lines over and over one another as to generate a similar style to what the thread was producing. For the first studio portrait outcome I tried out using the lines to go around shapes in geometric styles, in this example I followed around the flower. For the second studio portrait outcome I used, I just experimented with working the lines around the faces and seeing wha sort of styles and shapes I could create in an interesting pattern
These are my outcomes and responses as well as edits to Annegret Soltau and Jakob Kolding.
Annegret Soltau
This shows the contact sheet of the photoshoot from my responses to Annegret Soltau. I started by wrapping the string around my head as well as another persons head and took pictures from various angles. Next I chose two images that I thought were best and printed them out to work into.
Contact Sheet of Photoshoot
Below shows two of my printed out responses with the string worked and sewn into them just as Annegret Soltau does.
My First Response with the String Worked intoMy Second Response with the String Worked into
Final Responses in Black and White
I have placed my final responses into black and white as this is how Annegret Soltau presents most of her work as well so I thought it would create a more accurate response to her.
Final ResponseFinal Response 2
Jakob Kolding
My Own Edit
This is a trial montage that I created with inspiration from Jakob Kolding, by drawing on and creating separate elements to create an image. This one which I have created I have done quite subtly compared to my other photo-montage in response to Annegret Soltau. For this photograph above I have taken small parts out of a woman’s magazine and stuck it in replacement of some of the things in the shop for example I changed the words on the crossword or the prices on the till, I also went back and drew on some of what he had in his shop himself on paper and placed this onto the photograph.
Annegret Soltau (Born 16 January 1946) is a German visual artist born in Luneburg, Germany. Her work marks a fundamental reference point in the art of the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Photo-montages of her own body and face sewn over or collaged with black thread are the most well known of the artist.
In ‘Selbst’ the artists ties up her face with tight threads of black silk, just like a cocoon, of which she makes a photographic record that is subsequently stitched by following a geometric pattern that resembles a sign. In her Video-Performances and Phototableaus she wanted to make an intimate processes like sexuality, pregnancy, birth, abortion, sickness and violence to become subjects of the arts. From 1977 to 1980 she dealt with her pregnancies of her two children. She asked herself the question: How can I combine creativity and motherhood without losing myself as my own person.
Performance art and photography became a liberation device for Soltau herself as well. After a series of self-portraits that show her in a cocoon made of black thread in various stages of pupation, she made her first sewn photo works in 1975. From that point onwards, her work was influenced by her understanding of human existence as a constant metamorphosis, and the threat to and expansion of the self throughout these changes. She finally became the center of her art: “I am using myself as a model because I can go the farthest with me.”
The tactile drawing with needle and thread, which has been her hallmark ever since, can be found in its probably most aesthetic version in the series of self portraits entitled Verspannungen from the Deutsche Bank Collection. “I liked the simplicity of those photo booth pictures, where you simply sit in the booth. It was important to me that the threads connect the various states like telephone wires.” The threads sewn across the photos follow the outlines of her face like cobwebs. Eyes, nose, and mouth become fixed points in an ornamental work of strapping and sewing that seems like an especially subtle for of self-mutilation. –Article Link
Annegret Soltau
Her imagery, which is both provocative and disturbing, often explores themes related to the self, metamorphosis and the female body. Alongside other artists such as Cindy Sherman and Suzy Lake, Soltau’s work is regarded as a key reference point for feminist art in the 70s and 80s.
In an interview about her work, Soltau says, “Above all I am interested in the image of women. What happens to women these days, how do they present themselves? Which compulsions (and liberties) exist for women today?”
Below is another photo-montage by Annegret Soltau. It is still a self portrait like in the above examples however this was produced a couple of years on and can be seen to have a different style. She has still sewn back into the photograph however this time it is to stitch other pictures onto the original, they have been ripped and placed to create an abstract looking portrait it has a different and almost more powerful effect for her to be stitching the parts together rather than having it seamless by gluing it. It also makes the picture more recognisable to her as it has become one of her signifying techniques.
Self Portrait | Annegret Soltau
Other Artist to look at during experimentation:
Jakob Kolding
‘In terms of subject, the work has gone from a relatively specific interest in modernist utopias and suburban space.’
The idea of landscape plays a big part in Berlin-Based Jakob Kolding’s gritty pieces. He likes the fact that every element used references something outside of the work, making for a multilayered and complex experience. He is acutely aware that context always matters and enjoys playing around with this in ‘simple yet meaningful ways’. Collage is always at the heart of his creative process and he admits that ‘even when the work doesn’t look like a collage, that is basically still how I think about it. I like how in the process you can build up your own vocabulary, something very personal by made only out of found images. Nothing comes from nothing.’ – Cuts & Paste (Caroline Roberts and Richard G. Brereton)
Jakob Kolding | Memories of the FututreJakod Kolding | Round up
For my photo-montage I decided to link thematically to John Heartfield. While he had strong anti-Nazi messages in his works, I chose to link to my polish heritage and explore the communist era of Poland. I decided I wanted to show the negative impact that socialism had on Poland, it’s economy and it’s people. For the style of editing I used, I decided to make a piece similar to those by Martha Rosler. I used a multiply layer of a piece of crinkled paper as well as various filter in order to age the background and give it the appearance of a communist propaganda poster.
Photo-montage is the process of creating a photo through the process of cutting and sticking different images together, in order to present a single final image.
This technique was first introduced by “Dadaists” in 1915 in order to aid their protest against the First World War, and was later adopted by surrealists, resulting in the creation of work that broke the rules of conventional art, and expressed opinions (political, social e.t.c) through bold, noisy and nonsensical artwork.
Dadaism: A movement in European art and literature where artists disregarded the conventional aesthetics of art produced at the time, and instead created bold, nonsensical and ridiculous artwork in order to either voice opinions in an over the top fashion, or to ridicule the meaningless of certain aspects of the modern world.
Photo-montage can be used to create abstract and surreal artwork, and the introduction of Photoshop and photo editing software has made the creation of photo-montage images much easier for many. Below are a collection of images where artists have created photo-montages:
Photo-montage has developed through the years, and was wildly popular during the 20th century among the more forward thinking, rebellious artists and photographers who wanted to break the rules of conventional artwork. Hannah Hoch is an example of an artist who used photo-montage to express her critiques of society, politics and the way art was viewed during her time. Below is a mood-board including some examples of her photo-montage work:
Hoch didn’t shy away from expressing her opinions, and often portrayed female equality and feminism in her work, which was a new subject that went against the more conservative beliefs of the public at the time (and so was welcomed by Dadaists).
Photomontage has continued to be a popular form of expressionism even through modern times, with artists often expressing their opinions on current political events through the use of photomontage. Modern photographers and artists who express themselves through the use of photomontage include Scott Treleaven and Peter Kennard.
Examples of Peter Kennard’s work can be seen below, in which some of the images are clearly critical of the current political situation in the UK and USA:
Where’s UKIP Now?SubTrumpSoldier With GlobeQuick Polish
Photomontage has evolved along with the political and social struggles that artists use it to convey. Modern technology has enabled photomontages to be created only using a computer, without the need for physically cutting or sticking. This has allowed for many artists to more smoothly layer art together, to create montages of different photographs that seem like they fit together more easily. The increase in the publics political knowledge through the years has also allowed for artists to place more subtle critics of social and political events in their work, allowing for the meaning behind their images to become layered, and thus adding more to the image for the viewer to think about.
