Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that a final image may appear as a seamless photographic print.
Introduction
A photo-montage is a collage constructed from photographs. The technique has been used historically to make political statements and gained popularity in the early 20th century (World War 1-World War 2). Many Artists such as Raoul Haussman , Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield employed cut-n-paste techniques as a form of propaganda as well as Soviet artists like Aleksander Rodchenko and El Lissitsky. Photo-montage is a type of collage art. It is composed primarily of photographs or fragments of photographs in order to direct the viewer’s mind toward specific connections. The pieces are often constructed to convey a message, whether that be a commentary on political, social, or other issues. When done correctly, they can have a dramatic impact
History
Soviet Propaganda
The photo-montage technique appeared in Russia and Europe during WWI and developed particularly in Moscow. The main creators of the genre were Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitsky. After the revolution, their work got a boost from Vladimir Lenin after he declares that ‘photography is a super-powerful propaganda tool in a country where 70% of the population cannot read’. During the civil war he even makes plans to give every soldier a camera in order to ‘let them use it as a weapon able to demonstrate visually and precisely the political changes’. Although the idea wasn’t pushed any further, due to technical difficulty. The photo-montage would then be used to portray a cheerful “reality” and bright future. The medium combined the realism of the photography with the revolutionary ideas. Some examples:
Aleksander Rodchenko
El Lissitsky
Pop Art and the Dada Movement
Pop Art was born in Britain in the mid 1950s, the technique of photo-montage then emerged and was also used a great amount by various Pop Artists in the mid 20th Century in order to explore and react to abstract expressionism, it also tackled popular consumerism, advertising, branding and marketing techniques. Some politcal concerns were also focused on such as war and gender roles.
The Dada movement was created in Germany after World War I. It attempted to create a new kind of art that was valued primarily for its conceptual properties rather than focusing on aesthetics or skills. Dada quickly spread to France and the US (to Paris and New York in particular), but many of its main creators (who worked with photography) still remained in Germany. One of the main ways in which the ‘Dadaists’ challenged traditional art was through photo-montage.
Artists such as Max Ernst and Hannah Höch used scissors and glue to cut up found (and some original) photographs from a number of sources and reassemble them, using contrast to emphasize their message. The use of photo-montage as an art technique was one of the most influential ways in which the Dadaists shook up the traditional ways of the art world.
Hannah Höch, ‘Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch’ in Germany (1919)
Further Examples:
David Hockney
Andy Warhol
The Stenberg Brothers
‘The Stenberg Brothers’ Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg were Moscow-born graphic designers from Russia who produced film posters for the Soviet Union during the 1920’s. During this time they created over more than 300 posters with their constructivism style. The two would create street art and propaganda posters with young artists, the two were highly regarded within in the ‘avant-garde’ scene of Moscow at the time. This propaganda style can be seen throughout their posters from the 20’s. Their work was very important for the Soviet Union at the time, as film was used as a powerful propaganda tool to promote their principles to a mostly illiterate country. The brothers also had to communicate this through imagery using clear photographs and typography so that everything can be understood universally.
Examples of their propaganda film posters:
Analysis of Key Poster
‘Gossip’ The Stenberg Brothers
TECHNICAL -VISUAL-CONCEPTUAL-CONTEXTUAL
The striking poster above was created for a film in 1928, in the Soviet era by The Stenberg Brothers. The poster was for the film ‘Gossip’ which attempted to show the danger of careless talk, suggesting that those who spoke about things they didn’t understand or which didn’t concern them would fall victim to fear and confusion. Gossip was used as a propaganda tool across the Soviet Union, its poster was utilised to reiterate the film’s message on the people.
In the foreground, a man can be seen gazing into a street car in open mouthed horror, his expression is seen by the fearful face of a female passenger. The layout is simple and 2D, this helps to make the point and meaning of the propaganda to come across direct and without confusion, it also seems to be set out as a scene from the film which further reinforces this. The colours used in the poster are generally vibrant primary colours which creates an eye catching poster, and are helpfully seperated by black and white lines to make the intentions and scenes clear to see, this technique is also used with the titles and the writing sections.
Introduction to Tableaux Vivants
Tableau Vivant is the French term for a ‘living picture’. It is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically lit. It therefore combines aspects of theater and the visual arts.
Examples:
PAUL M SMITH – LADS NIGHT OUT
DAVID LA CHAPELLE – LAST SUPER 2008Creating a Response
To create my own Tableau Vivant I have chosen to re-create one of Tom Hunter’s photos (which will be on another blog post), and also re-create some of the iconic scenes from Stand By Me. Stand By Me was a coming of age film released in 1986, it was directed by Rob Reiner. The film is based on Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body. Its title is derived from Ben E. King’s song, which plays over the ending credits. Stand by Me tells the story of four boys in a small town in Maine, USA who go on a hike to find the dead body of a missing child. The film was nominated for one Academy Award (for Best Adapted Screenplay) and two Golden Globe Awards (for Best Motion Picture-Drama and Best Director, respectively).
These are the stills from the film which I have chosen to re-create:
Apart from the obvious plot of the film, it is mainly about friendship and loyalty. This can be seen through the photos I have chosen, especially the first one where Chris is comforting Gordon and the other photos where the boys are seen together, laughing and joking with each other. This creates a nostalgic childhood atmosphere upon first glance which fades once the film continues and the insecurities between the boys start to appear.
For the location of my shoot I have chosen to do it on an old railway walk as this is the closest I can get to the actual film, it includes a wide road and lots of trees which matches the background in the photos. For the models I am going to have a different number of them (3) and I am going to use all girls instead of all boys. Below are my final outcomes for each re-creation:
Outcomes:
Antonio Mora is a creative art director since 1995 and is gradually gravitating towards the more artistic area of his profession. His work which are personal and evocative, are meant to trigger intense feelings. His inspiration comes from the portraits themselves. He uses his imagination to bring an image to life to create a moment between sleep and consciousness. He says that his work is inspired by the belief that “art is made to disturb the conscience”. He has been developing an extensive collection of portraits in which dream worlds are superimposed with reality. Antonio usually blends humans and nature into surreal artworks. Having mastered the technique of digital collage using various tools such as filters, hues, saturation and gradients of opacity, his creative process results in unified textures and the merging of the photographs. He works with images he finds through the internet, magazines and blogs and fuses them together with his photo manipulation techniques. His seamless way of mixing various concepts together creates a mind tricking illusion for the viewer.
Visual: This is a portrait that consists of the natural and unnatural world. The woman’s face has been slightly revealed, creating a mysterious effect to the image. If you look closely you can see cracks in the photo which makes it seem like the image is ageing and about to peel off. Around the head area you can see arches which appears to be a bridge that has been copied and pasted several times. On the left hand side you can see a cluster of leaves resting in the corner. The reflection of the leaves and the arches can also be seen in the image, seamlessly blending into the woman’s face. You can also see that the smallest arch and its reflection has created a circle which has been replaced for the real eye that has been erased. Antonio Mora has placed multiple pictures on top of one another and then lowered the opacity to blend all the images together.
Composition: The focal point in this image is where the eye is supposed to be. The arches have decreased in size the further out it is which captures the viewers attention and makes their eyes follow through the endless tunnel. The contrast in colours is interesting since the lower half is dark and gloomy while the upper half has a tranquil effect through the nature and peaceful landscape.
Opinion: I like how the artist has used nature to replace a large amount of the woman’s face. I think this image is telling us a story about a young woman who is broken which is represented by the cracks. She has a lot going on in her head which is represented by the several arches that circle around her. She appears to be envious which can be seen through the colour imagery of green depicted through the leaves and their reflection.
Sunday 16th December 2018
Each year Hautlieu School students and staff come together to host a Christmas party for the senior citizens that live in the school parish, St. Saviour. Hautlieu do this at Christmas time to ensure that seniors are included in our Christmas celebrations whilst also giving back and building a relationship with our wider community.
This year I had the opportunity of capturing the event in photographs.
I chose to edit this photograph as I liked that because of the depth of field each model was in a different amount of focus and the model standing in front catches your attention straight away.
Once I’d opened this photo up in Photoshop the first thing I did was adjust the brightness to +10 and the contrast to +20, I did this to bring out some of the vibrant colours. Doing this helped to bring out the colours as the brightness affects the highlights, and increasing the contrast made the lighter colours in the photo lighter and the darker colours darker, ultimately making them stand out more.
I then went to image-adjustments-vibrance and increased the vibrance to +35 and the saturation to +2 to add to the pop of colour I was going for in this edit.
As you can see, after making these adjustments the model in the foregrounds hair appeared very warm toned. I went to image-adjustments-colour balance and changed shadows (-20,0,+15), midtones (+10,0,+5), and highlights (+8,5,+12) and this gave the image an overall cooler tone.
To finish off this edit I cropped out the bicycles from the left side of the photograph, to both make the photo less busy and cluttered, and keep the focus on the subjects.
The first thing that I did when beginning to edit this photo was add on the ‘cooling filter (82)’ at a density of 10%, this made the photo cooler toned. I experimented with the density a little bit before deciding on 10% as I did not want the photograph to look as if it had a blue coloured overlay.
To finish this edit I increased the brightness to 5 and the contrast to 15, I did this to just enhance some colours while still enabling the edit to look somewhat natural.
Masked Portraits:
My inspiration for my masked portrait project was Ralph-Eugene Meatyard. He always believed that everyone is connected but when you use the mask, you take away the differences. Everyone is unique and individual but also the same. Taking away from the trivial importance of appearances.
Meatyard once explained his reasons for the project, saying “the idea of a person, a photograph, say, of a young girl with a title ‘Rose Taylor’ or the title ‘Rose’ or no title at all becomes an entirely different thing. ‘Rose Taylor’ is a specific person, whether you know her nor not. ‘Rose’ is more generalized and could be one of many Roses—many people. No title, it could be anybody.” And in the same way, a mask “serves as non-personalizing a person.”
This inspired me as it allows for individuality without concern for appearances or reason so be insecure over these differences. This project allowed me to explore portraiture without a need to worry about a physical appearance, giving me more freedom to compose the images how I wanted to, and be able to photograph a person without the focus being on the face or the identity of the person behind the mask.
In a way this was liberating as I could tell a story without context or a character. I was able to simply compose the images I wanted with my own narrative. There is no opportunity to “judge a book by its cover” or judge a person by their appearance as it remains concealed throughout the project.
Edited Portraits:
My inspiration for this project came from several things. During the portraiture unit I have been drawn to obscure portraits that focus on particular facial features, especially the eyes. I have always found the eyes to be one of the things I focus on in pictures and wanted to capture this during the project.
Secondly I was influenced by images regarding covered faced. Whether the face was hidden or partially covered by something in the image or the photograph had been manipulated in some way to hinder the view of the face. I found this really interesting as similarly to my masked portrait project it involves hiding identity.
Despite wanting to cover the face up I did not want both my projects to involve a lack or hiding of identity, so combined partially hidden faces with strong and bold features. My ideas began to flow from there and in the end I combined the things that inspired me and came up with the concept of hiding the face yet capturing the strongest feature on the face which I believe to be the eyes.
My project focuses on covering up the face in order to declutter the image and keep some elements of a hidden identity but in doing so focusing on the rest of the image and especially the eyes.
Natural lighting can come in many different temperatures, intensities and tones, it is used a lot in portraiture to create softer looking photographs.
