To create this grid of headshots, I used previous images I had taken and imported them onto a grid in photoshop, aligned them correctly so all images had the same length and width to create this final outcome. I used a range of coloured images but also incorporated a few black and white images. Each row of images complement each other, the top layer being greyscale, the middle having strong tones of red and the bottom row having a range of colours and saturation. Bright or dull lighting was created through artificial lighting and the colours were made with transparent coloured sheets over the studio lights.

Street photography, a genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place. The very publicness of the setting enables the photographer to take candid pictures of strangers, often without their knowledge. Street photography aims to capture everyday life in public places, particularly in urban landscapes. Usually it’s a form of candid photography, when the person isn’t aware they’re being photographed, which creates more realistic and powerful images. Great street photographs say something about life; they speak to us; they fill us with an emotion; or they give us insight. They are not about light; they are not about shapes or forms; they are not about faces.  Light, shapes, and faces can only aid in the success of a photo; they cannot be the reason for it.  When you look at a great street photograph you should not leave it saying, ‘Wow that light was amazing.’  You should leave it saying, ‘Wow the emotion or story in that photograph really hit me’.

Garry Winogrand

Winogrand became interested in photography while serving in the military as a weather forecaster. He defined a new approach to street photography in 1960s and 1970s. A relatively new book, The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand (published in March 2018), presents an inspiring and unusual overview from his life’s work, including many images that have never been seen before, along with his classic iconic photographs and some surprising early color work.

Winogrand takes photographs and captures many different gestures, facial expressions, body language and relationships. He is known for transforming photography – “…he transformed it from an art of observation to an art of participation”. People’s opinions of his work are extremely positive; “I was overwhelmed. They were the first photos that struck me as relating to the other modes of creation”.

Final Images

I like the first two images partly because of the emotion on the man’s face, he appears to be happy and content in his current situation and nothing seems to be negatively effecting his mood. What I also like about these first images is the range of black and white tones after making the image greyscale.

I particularly like these two images, although you can’t see any emotion portrayed through these two photographs, the sunlight and saturated colours are eye-catching and they create a happy, positive atmosphere, leading the viewer to think the woman in the photography is also in a light-hearted mood. I also edited this image in black and white as the natural daylight contrasts strongly with the inside walls of the coffee shop, and the woman’s body, almost creating a silhouette.

These four images capture people’s attention being grasped by something that isn’t in the frame of the photograph, leading the viewer to wonder what could be the interesting things, people or events that has gripped their attention due to the different facial expressions and mannerisms; in the bottom right image a woman is pointing questionably at something, in the top right image the woman in the couple is admiring something above her, both creating a sense of mystery for the viewer.

I particularly like these two black and white images, the wide stride of both women create a sense of confidence and dominance. In the top image, the women walking in from each side creates a geometrical reflection, almost making it look like one woman is being mirrored to the other side of the photograph. There are strong contrasts of black and white tones, the highlights are bright because the image was taken in natural sunlight. The bodies of the women, along with the sun, create elongated shadows.

Double exposure photography refers to merging multiple images. The goal is to make them surreal, emotional, or humorous. They usually feature silhouettes. In photography and cinematography, multiple exposure is a technique in which the camera shutter is opened more than once to expose the film multiple times, usually to different images. The resulting image contains the subsequent image/s superimposed over the original. The technique is sometimes used as an artistic visual effect and can be used to create ghostly images or to add people and objects to a scene that were not originally there.

My Multi-exposure Edits

I used my studio photographs I had previously taken to create these final images with multiple exposures, I layered two or three images on top of my background image and lowered the percentage of opacity to make the top images transparent and ghostly.

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. The highest point of it’s popularity came in World War I. In 1916, John Heartfield and George Grosz experimented with pasting pictures together, a form of art later named “Photomontage.” Heartfield was the first to use photomontage to tell a “story” from the front cover of the book to the back cover.

Images by Heartfield 1930’s

Alexander Rodchenko

Rodchenko discovered new ways to condense space, time, and information into single images, where realism and abstraction, high and low culture, and multiple narratives were mixed and layered as never before. Innovations in graphic art developed hand-in-hand with the rise of the film industry, for which artists found new work designing posters and advertising material, and with the use of montage in film editing. This revolution in style and aesthetics was helped along by the advancement of mechanical means of reproduction, such as photographic printing and lithography, and by the increasingly vast circulation and distribution of mass-media publications.

Rodchenko works with both colour and black and white, his outlines of his cut-outs are harsh and he has multiple layers to one image.

My Photomontage Edits

For this image I started with a black and white background and copied the layer for each coloured circle i made, to create the circles i used the elliptical marquee tool and created a range of sized circles on each layer whilst changing the hue to get different colours and changing the saturation to have stronger, more vibrant colours.

For these images I started with a background then cut and pasted another image on top and used the rectangular marquee tool to section the areas i wanted the second image to overlap. I selected my area, inverse and deleted it to leave the shape I originally selected. My images were already colourful as I used transparent sheets over the lights when i took the pictures. I contrasted colour with black and white to make my shapes stand out and have a sharp outline and contrast to the image behind it.

Photo-montage is a medium that can be traced back to the Dadaists in 1915, a Zurich artist movement, who used this technique to make political statements, which can be seen in their protest against the First World War. Dada artist Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch, used this medium in order to create propaganda for this opposing statement of the war. This propaganda often showcased what can be called the cut-n-paste technique, which consisted of section of cut out images layered over one another, creating a final piece. This Dadaist movement can be said to be a style of surrealism, in which conventional art is challenged with these distorted forms of reality, using the increasingly popular media of photography.

Mood Board

John Stezaker

John Stezaker, born in 1949, is an English artist best known for his conceptual photomontages, in which usually display either two portraits, or a portrait and a landscape layered over one another creating a collage like result. The images that Stezaker uses for these pieces are found photographs, ranging from film stills, postcards, magazines, books or commercial photographs. It has been said that this style of photomontage takes a similar form as the work of early pioneers such as Hannah Hoch and Man Ray, showcases the features of Dadaism and surrealism. John Stezaker’s series named ‘Marriage’ appears to focus on portraiture, displaying two juxtaposing images of film stars overlapping creating one fragmented form. However, within Stezaker’s series named ‘Mask XIII’ the photomontages consist of one celebrity portrait in black and white, with a juxtaposing colour landscape, usually taken from a postcard, concealing the face.

Analysis

This image created by John Stezaker showcases a photomontage of a black and white portrait, in which the upper half of the face is concealed by a colour landscape. The portrait used in this piece presents the subject directly in the centre of the frame, with only their head and shoulders visible, leaving only a small amount of empty space above and to the side of the subject. The landscape chosen by Stezaker showcases what appears to be a cave with two openings, which act as a sort of replacement for the eyes in this collage, with the connecting structure in between them resembling a nose. Furthermore, these outlines of the cave entrances also act as leading lines for this collage, as they not only resemble the facial features missing, but also correspond with the shape of the face, continuing the curve upwards. The overlay of this photograph juxtaposes the background image with its dark and earthy tones, creating a strong contrast with the lightness of the portrait.

From a technical point of view it can be said that chosen portrait was taken with studio soft lighting, due to the consistent light tone throughout the image and lack of harsh shadows behind the subject. In addition, it can also be seen that the lighting used to capture the landscape photograph must have been natural. It appears that the aperture used for both images was low, allowing for a large depth of field, as the focal range seems to be the same within the foreground and backgrounds. For the landscape the ISO would have been set high, as there is only a small amount of light entering the photograph, through the cave, meaning that the camera would need to capture as much light as possible. However, the portrait would only require a low ISO setting due to the studio lighting flooding the image.

This piece taken from John Stezaker’s mask series is said to be inspired by an essay written by Elias Canetti’s on masks and unmasking in his book Crowds and Power. Another form of inspiration was taken from teaching a course in the origins of art, with the mask being the point of origin, Stezaker has stated. This provoked Stezaker to create these collages, with the aim to exhibit the urge for ‘exile from life in the world of images’

My Photomontages

Magazine Cut Outs

For these portrait photomontages I cut out sections of images from a magazine of film stars aiming to resemble Fujiwara’s ‘Marriage’ series. I cut these sections out using a craft knife, allowing for a precise and neat line. I then experimented with placements of the cutouts.

Photoshop Edits

For these portrait and landscape photomontage edits, I aimed to replicate Fujiwara’s ‘Mask XIII’ series by using Photoshop to layer these images. Firstly I edited two of my own images by converting them into black and white for the background layer, then I layered over a landscape image of mine, concealing the upper half of the face. Next, I used two images taken from a magazine as a background layer, then again concealed the upper face with one of my own landscapes.

Final Image

I believe that this photomontage using magazine cut outs is my best image as it best shows resemblance to John Stezaker’s found image pieces. This is as like Stezaker’s, I used found images of film stars of opposite genders, in order to juxtapose each other, to create this final piece. In addition, these portraits used are of the head and shoulders, leaving a small amount of empty space around the subject. However, I also believe that I could produce a better result by taking more of my own images, and combining them with found images.