Photomontage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Overview
2 Gallery
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Overview

Artistic photomontage showing what a complete iceberg might look like under water.

Photomontage is the process (and result) of making a composite picture by cutting and joining a number of photographs. The composite picture is sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a photographic print. The English photographer Henry Peach Robinson (1830–1901) is credited with making the first photomontages, soon after starting his career in 1857.

Many of the early examples of fine-art photomontage consist of photographed elements superimposed on watercolours, a combination returned to by (e.g.) George Grosz in about 1915. He was part of the Dada movement in Berlin which was instrumental in making montage into a modern art-form. The other major exponents were John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann and Johannes Baader. Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals. Passionate criticism of art, politics, and culture filled their publications. Individual photos combined together to create a new subject or visual image proved to be a powerful tool for the Dadists protesting World War I and the bourgeois interests that they believed inspired the war.

Parallel to the Germans, Russian Constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky and the husband-and-wife team of Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina created pioneering photomontage work for the Soviet government. Additional influential artists that used photomontage include Aleksandr Rodchenko, Salvador Dalí, John McHale, David Hockney and Thomas Ruff.

Other methods for combining pictures are also called photomontage, such as combination printing, the printing from more than one negative on a single piece of printing paper (e.g. O. G. Rejlander, 1857), front-projection and computer montage techniques. Much like a collage is composed of multiple facets, artists also combine montage techniques. Romare Berden’s (1912-1988) series of black and white "photomontage projections" is an example. His method began with compositions of paper, paint, and photographs put on boards 8 1/2x11 inches. Berden fixed the imagery with an emulsion that he then applied with handroller. Subsequently, he enlarged the collages photographically.

Repetitive patterns created by the seams of individual images in David Hockney's "Pearblossom Highway" produce an internal tension within the overall composition.

Creating a photomontage has, for the most part, become easier with the advent of computer software such as Adobe Photoshop, Pixel image editor and GIMP. These programs make the changes digitally, allowing for faster workflow and more precise results. Yet some artists have pushed the boundaries of digital image editing to create extremely time-intensive compositions that rival the demands of the traditional arts.

For instance, London-based landscape photographer Edward Hill uses computer software to create circular photomontages or photospheres that average five days to create. Hill builds his photospheres from up to 100 distinct photographs that then present the observer with multi-directional spherical views of a landscape. According to published reports, Hill developed the digital photographics used in the spheres during a period of five years.

[edit] Montage as illusion

Image:Fishdecoyflying3.jpg

Image:Fotocollage crop.jpg

A photomontage may be at once real and imaginary. Two-dimensional representation of physical space is by definition an illusion. However, digital imaging software offers the capability more readily to extend the illusion to invented reality. Such constructs exhibit photorealistic qualities but portray a physical world that does not exist. Digital imagery in the art world may prompt thought and examination. Yet combined photos and digital manipulation in the mass media industry can set up a collision between esthetics and ethics. For instance, fake news photos presented as real.

Author Oliver Grau in his book "Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion" notes that virtual reality as a result of technical exploitation is a long-standing practice throughout the ages. Still, contemporary artists have taken digital imagery to unforeseen extremes. Consider Bert Monroy, author and artist. He creates extraordinarily complex "digital paintings" with Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. His illustration of a Chicago train station reportedly required 2,000 hours to complete and deployed 50 Photoshop files resulting in a montage of more than 15,000 layers.

[edit] Montage enlargements

Two competing multi-media companies, HP and Eastman Kodak Company, have also vied to create the world's largest photomontage. HP held the title over its competitor Kodak briefly in 2002. HP produced a record-breaking photomontage as part of a program launched at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio; United States. HP invited Americans to submit photos of themselves and their favorite invention. Submissions ranged from "me and my microwave," to "me with my new purple hair, as I reinvent myself."

Kodak turned to the people for help as well in its quest for the record. Kodak helped celebrate the 2004 Olympic Games by convincing the Greek community to submit 16,609 photos of themselves to build a record-setting photomontage titled "The Whole of Greece in One Smile." The composition assembled the thousands of photo to make up the face of a child smiling. The final montage covered more than 5,000 square feet, according to press reports. Kodak broke its own previous record for largest montage for a composite of 12,012 photos displayed in a St. Petersburg, Russia, in May 2003.

Computer artist Robert Silvers achieved much smaller results using a similar approach as Kodak. Silvers combined 1,000 landscape photos by the late Sen. Barry Goldwater of the United States into a photomosaic fashioned as a portrait of Goldwater. The computer-aided design required hand-fitting tiles for the final 4 feet by 6 feet image.

[edit] Photojournalistic layouts

Image:38th collage a.jpg

Image:Photolayout4.jpg

"Photojournalists capture 'verbs,' " according to award-winning photojournalist Mark M. Hancock. "A photographer takes pictures of nouns." The success of photojournalists in capturing action is particularly on display when multiple images are combined with text to tell a single story. Such photo stories deliver visual punch to the printed page and provide concentrated narrative. Photomontage, photo layout, and photo spread are all part of the lexicon of those who create and publish feature picture stories in newspapers and magazines.

The 19th century tradition of physically joining multiple images into a composite and photographing the results prevailed in press photography and offset lithography until the widespread use of digital image editing. Contemporary photo editors now create "paste-ups” digitally. Yet timeless fundamentals of compelling visual story-telling transcend technology. The pursuit of the verb continues.

[edit] Scrapbooking phenomenon

Image:John09.jpg

High art, political posters, and mass media may have sustained photomontage for the past 150 years. But it is largely soccer moms cutting and pasting family images into scrapbooks who are propelling a worldwide interest in montage. The average scrapbooker is a married woman in her 30s with children, according to news reports concerning the documentary film “Scrapped,” released in September 2006.

The urge of young mothers to preserve family memories and to tell life stories has spurred a $2.5 billion scrapbooking industry; according to Minneapolis, Minnesota’s, WCCO television news citing the U.S. Hobby and Craft Assoc. And while cutting and pasting with a mouse and a computer may replace traditional scissors and glue, the importance of photographs as a personalized art medium remains strong.

Digital scrapbooking employs a computer to create montage designs and captions. The amateur scrapbooker can turn home projects into professional output, such as CDs, DVDs, display on TV, or uploaded to a website for viewing or assembly into one or more books for sharing.

[edit] Gallery

A grid organizes this photorealistic montage. Visual lines and color shapes of closely spaced images contribute to the general graphic design.	Analog collides with digital in this pseudo photorealistic image.	David Hockney's "Pearblossom Highway" is a tightly-fitted composite that creates an expressionistic, painterly feel.	Newspaper or magazine photo feature layouts combine pictures and text to tell a story.
A "flying fish" swims in an imaginary underwater world.	A documentary image (Photo 2) juxtaposed against an array of sliced citrus (Photo 1) creates an overall effect that is at once realistic and abstract.	This panorama montage is assembled from five distinct images.	The unexpected image of a human eye peering from darkness pushes this image into the surreal.

[edit] References

Professional photojournalist Mark Hancock's resume. and Blogspot
“The Scrapbooking Phenomenon,” WCCO News, Channel 4. Minneapolis, Minn.; United States. November 11, 2006
"It's hard to tell where pixels end and reality begins," The San Francisco Chronicle; September 26, 2006.
"Fantasy, fairy tale and myth collide in images: By digitally altering photos of landscapes, artist Anthony Goicolea creates an intriguing world," The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia); June 19, 2006.
"Around town - Reviews - Edward Hill's Photospheres," Time Out Group; April 12, 2006.
"Life through a lens: A different perspective," Ealing Times; January 3, 2006.
"Kodak wins award for Athens Olympic advertising; Winning photomontage sets new Guinness World Record," M2 Presswire; March 26, 2004.
Greek Olympics; Outdoor Advertising Association of America
"HP Celebrates America's Inventiveness by Creating World's Largest Digital Image," HP website. See also Business Wire; June 12, 2002.
"A Portrait of Goldwater Is a Computer-Aided Mosaic of His Own," The Chronicle of Higher Education; February 1, 2002.
"Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion," MIT Press 2002; Cambridge, Mass. ISBN 0262572230
"Musings on Collage: The Photomontages of Romare Bearden," The New York Times; May 11, 1997.