Produce either a series of four to six portraits (looking at Stezaker and Stenram) or a series of four to six landscape-based images based on your immediate surroundings (as with Gill’sHackney Marshes series). Complete Parts 1 and 2 of the assignment and upload the finished images to your learning log together with a short reflection (500–1,000 words) on your motivations, references and methods for both parts of the assignment.
Part 1:
Use traditional ‘cut and paste’ techniques (scissors/scalpel and glue) to produce a series of simple photomontages using elements from two to five original or found photographs. These can be found images and/or images that you’ve shot yourself. Re-photograph your finished photomontages and present the work in your learning log as a digital file.
Part 2:
Using digital montage techniques (Photoshop or similar image-editing software) produce a digital montage using elements from a minimum of two and a maximum of five digital files. Use components that you have shot yourself rather than found images for this exercise.
Here are some further online resources that you might find useful:
Listen to Daniel Gordon discuss his digital portraiture with MOMA curator Eva Respini: Link 12
ARTIST STATEMENT PART 1
My aim, with this work, was to create an amusing set of images based on a set of sepia photographs of my village in France. The original images were made by a local man, at the beginning of the 1900’s, and are held in a small private museum. I wanted, in each case, to introduce a modern element into the final collage. I did not want to slavishly follow one of the collage artists recommend for review, but instead to try to find my own voice with the work.
Preparation for Assignment
Having looked at all the reading material suggested for me Hannah Hoch stands out from the rest. But since I have produced ‘politically’ inspired collages for my 1.3 exercise I have decided to make collages of the landscape. I was given a CD, by a photographer neighbour and member of the local Commune, of Deydier’s images made at the beginning of the 1900’s. There are 71 images in total. There are some duplicates among them and some images of postcards which he produced.
Deydier lived and worked as a photographer in the village where I live. His grand niece lives now in the house where he used to live. When I asked her if the house was in the family for a long time she replied “No not that long. Since about 1850 I believe!!” I picked out a number of the images which I thought could be the basis of a collage.
COLLAGE 1
The first image I chose is just a couple of meters from my home. It shows the house of the man who gave me the CD. Although the original image is not dated it must have been at the beginning of the 1900s. I made an image from the same place last week and it shows that very little has changed around here in the past 100 years. The steps up to the Portail, where cereals and animal bedding were dried, are gone and there is a garage door where the original door used to be.
I superimposed these images to obtain the image below. The idea was to combine the old and the new as I wanted to add a modern theme to the combined images.
The theme I wanted to add was of the very topical problem which is taking place in France at the moment – the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ protests. These men in the old image are probably distilling cider. But they are very ordinary people who, for me, represent most of the people who are participating in the Gilets Jaunes protests. The ‘casseurs’ are the ‘rent a mob’ who turn up at every protest march and cause havoc. They have nothing to do with the real people participating in these protests. So I did not want to show any destruction. Macron is also in the image wearing a Gilet Jauane – something he would never do! The police officer is there redundant as these people are going about their job calmly.
The collage:
COLLAGE 2:
The second collage is also drawn from Deydier’s images. The Etang or pond is situated at the entrance to our village and was a mill race. I decided to make a fun collage supposing the Olympic swimming would be held in our village in 2020. I added the swimmers which is an image I retrieved from a magazine. I added the flags to give the idea of lanes and the publicity strip along the side. Our village is called Cucuron, the title was taken from our village magazine. The Olympic rings were copied from Google Images.
The collage:
COLLAGE 3
There is an ancient tower in our village. Dydier also made images of the tower. I decided to copy his image but to cut and repast the tower as if it was leaning like the leaning tower of Pisa. I then made a publicity type collage of the ‘new image superimposed on the old with the tower leaning. The superimposed mage is printed on tracing paper so the original image could be seen through it.
To this I added publicity material for tourism. It is a very light hearted collage.
The collage:
ARTIST STATEMENT PART 2
With this part of the work I am returning to my photographic archives to extract sets of images, of my village and its ambience, which I can combine into a number of collages. I am aiming to give the viewer a taste of what life is like in a Provencal village,.
Preparation for the assignment:
I looked at the work of a number of young artists working on digital collage. Among these was Justin Peters (1). I liked the originality of his work. I loved some of the work on this site (2). The work of Sebastian Onufszak(3) I found very graphic design based but I was not sure if I wanted to go down this road. I feel collage suits the graphic artist equally as well as either the fine artist and the photographer. For my project I wanted a more pictorial feel to the collages.
My aim was to create three circular collages which could be easily read. In order to do this I had to revisit a very large number of my archived images. I then had to learn how to cut an image into segments in Photoshop. I found this video (4) useful.
The technique:
I made a circle, created a new layer, made a perpendicular line with pencil tool, removed overrun of the line with rectangular marquee. Then I selected the line, used the free transform tool, selected centre top square and chose an angle size depending on how many segments I wanted. Then holding down shift+Alt+CMD+T(pressed a number of times depending on the segment number). I switched off visibility of image layer and merged the visible layers, switched on the image layer again. I then used the magic wand tool to select a segment, switched to image layer and used clt+c to select and copy this segment and opened a new file and pressed clt+v to place the segment. I repeated this to complete the circular ‘new’ image.
The reason I wanted to present the work in this way is because I have not found other photographers making collages like this and also I wanted to learn another skill in Photoshop. A search for collages in circular form, came up with the following selection:
COLLAGE 1: Cucuron rooftops
My archive images of my village roofs.
I live in Cucuron, Provence from October until April, approximately, every year. It used to snow almost every year but has not done so for a couple of years. I love the tiled roofs of Provence houses. I love the light and the clear blue skies even on the coldest of days.
I used three images to make this fairly simple collage. This is made up of six x 60° segments.
COLLAGE 2: Fêtes de Lumière
My village fireworks images.
The Fête de Lumière is a festival of light older than Christmas. It was, in fact, the precursor to Christmas. I enjoy trying to capture fireworks but have always been dissatisfied with the results. The display takes place around the village pond, on the 1st December, which is surrounded by 200 year old plane trees. While this is spectacular to see it is very difficult to get a place from which to photograph the fireworks. One is not allowed to go up behind the people doing the fireworks which would be the best place from which to take the images. Then there is the problem of crowds around the pond and the jostling for a better view or to allow the children to see what is happening. Trying to keep a tripod steady is almost impossible. However I have struggled to keep a record over the years as this is one of the big village events.
I wanted to make my ‘wheel’ as colourful and as balanced as possible. I used a total of five images and used more than one part of the image if I felt it would balance the final outcome.
As I got more skilled with the procedure I was able to use the parts of the image I wanted by rotating the original image and repeating the segment making procedure. Below is the final combined “Fête de Lumière” image. It is made up of 12 x 30° segments. Five images were used in the final selection.
COLLAGE 3: Fruit, Spices and Vegetables of the region
I did not have as many images to choose from although I would have thought before I began the exercise that I had many more. I used five different images, guava, dried tomatoes, kumquats & lychees, figs and spices. I started with the guava because it was so strong then I added the figs and fitted the other slices where I felt the colours made the wheel interesting.
This collage is made up of 24 x 15° angle segments.
Having completed the work I felt that a 3D title superimposed on the images would detract from them although I had planned on giving each image a 3D title (5).
Set up for photographing the collages:
I don’t have a studio in France so I have to use a Heath Robinson set-up. My studio lights here are a cheap version and the heads snapped off the base last year. Everything else about the lights is still working. So I set up the lights on two chairs. I used a 50m lens on my Nikon D800, used the back screen to focus and made the images.
REFLECTION ON THE WORK
Having completed the work I was unsure if I really understood what was involved in creating a montage so I checked the definition in the Cambridge Dictionary:
a piece of work produced by combining smaller parts, or the process of making such a work
The MOMA defines collage as a:
“technique and resulting work of art in which fragments of paper and other materials are arranged and glued to a supporting surface”.
This definitions reassured me that, in the practical sense, I had created six montage.
I then found the brief unclear. I was not sure if I should create 4 – 6 images for each part. Looking at the work of other students did not clarify the situation. My tutor suggested she had received different interpretations from different students and to follow my own council.
The montage artists that had been suggested to us were all creating serious work with, in many cases, political or social messages. However it was my aim, with this work, to create three amusing glue and paste montage and three visually pleasing digital montage. I am struggling to find my own voice in whatever work I am producing and I try not to be too influenced by the proposed reading and investigating of other artists’ work.
I am interested, always, in expanding my knowledge of techniques. As a grandmother I have a lot of experience of working with my grandchildren on ‘creating’ images with glue and paste. I have always found their imaginations to be much richer than adults with this technique. I think we loose the ‘innocence’ of childhood as we experience more and more in our daily lives. Hence I feel my glue and paste collages are too contrived and not artistic enough to resemble the deep meaningful work of Hannah Hoch.
I like the digital montages I have created. I think they fulfil the brief I created for myself – to create pleasing, non demanding, digital montages. I enjoyed the technique of creating them and I like the vibrance of the end product. I am thinking about turning the ‘slices’ of the fruit montage into a still life montage.
REFLECTION AFTER SIDE_WIDE HANGOUT
I think the general consensus was that the cut and paste collages fitted the brief better than the wheel montages. From Clive’s comments I gathered that the assessors would be looking for something similar with the montages. So I tried, while keeping a sense of fun, to use the technique I had learned to make a montage of Margaret Tatcher and Teresa May:
Woooohoooooo now we’re really getting somewhere! 
Maybe Theresa needs to be a bit more obvious.
Good point, I only said maybe. 
I’m enjoying the way it’s making them look literally pug-nacious. 
This involved quite a lot of resizing and blurring of Theresa May’s image to get a reasonable match.
Three images used, Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush. The pretty nose is The Donalds…
Holland his ex wife Segulin Royale and his lover Valerie Treweiller. What a menage a trois!!!
For this selection I used Putin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Lenin, Medvedev. The original images were all low resolution but I felt the blurred look gave the impression they were hiding.
18October 2019
Today I am waiting for my dot matrix paper for my assignment 5 so I decided to add Boris and his adviser to this series!!!! He managed to get a ‘deal’ across the line with the EU yesterday by selling everyone, more or less, short. But that is the nature of deals. As I listened I wondered what part Dominic Cummings was plating behind the scenes. So I created this ‘montage’ of the two of them.
REFLECTION AFTER FEEDBACK
One note, on the firework circle the bottom red slice has a fine white line between that slice and the blue one next to it. It is probably just an issue of adjusting the slice again to get rid of the white line.
Corrected:
The final images do certainly add some humour but they also have merit as they echo the combination of humour and political message that is in the tradition of Heartfield, Kennard et al.
Looking again at Heartfield’s work I am struck by the very serious nature of it. Hitler’s Germany was not something to be joked about or even satirised, whereas present day politicians, in my opinion, lend themselves to ridicule. Peter Kennard’s work certainly has a great deal more interest for me. Perhaps it is of my time. Since he was born a couple of years after me….. I just love Cameron and find the missile one really brilliant – no words – the image says it all.
To follow up on the power of Instagram – the account @murad is interesting to read about. There are now many ‘travel couple’ accounts, but this one was one of the first. The images have now become highly stylised but they have kept the idea of her leading us into the frame.(6)
I really did not like the work of Murad at all. The whole thing reminded me of those couples who devote their lives to travelling around expensive hotels and resorts and then blog about it….. There is nothing spontaneous or original about it. I could not see how this work relates at all to the work of Susan Tangmar. I liked her work especially this video:
In terms of montage, the work of John Heartfield is worth looking at again in light of the politics of our time, as is Barbara Kruger’s work.
I do love Barbara Kruger’s work – she is a real beacon of light for women.
FURTHER FEEDBACK FROM OTHER ARTIST FRIENDS:
Jo Ashby: Fine artist
I am always so interested in your work when it is totally beyond my experience or comfort zone – these most definitely fall into that bracket, although also described as ‘collage’ – interesting, isn’t it? My question would be – are the words required by the task? The images work on their own, I feel – but who am I? Very clever, whatever. I would be cutting up photos and sticking them down with pritt stick! Not very useful of me…..
Sandi Holmes: Artist, graphic designer and ceramicist:
- My Modern Met. 2018. Surreal Digital Art Collages by Young Artist Justin Peters. [ONLINE] Available at: https://mymodernmet.com/justin-peters-digital-art/. [Accessed 26 December 2018]
- 16+ Examples of Collage Artwork | Free & Premium Templates. 2018. 16+ Examples of Collage Artwork | Free & Premium Templates. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.template.net/design-templates/art/examples-of-collage-artwork/. [Accessed 26 December 2018].
- Behance. 2018. Behance. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.behance.net/onufszak. [Accessed 26 December 2018].
- YouTube. 2018. Photoshop Tutorial – Divide circle into equal segments – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ_1fEKBQ0s. [Accessed 18 December 2018].
- YouTube. 2018. 10 Steps to Getting Started With 3D | Photoshop Tutorial – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=u5crxEaZHkY. [Accessed 27 December 2018].
- Travel. 2019. How Instagram Stars Landed on Our Magazine Cover. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/follow-me-to-instagram-series-traveler-magazine-cover/. [Accessed 15 January 2019].
Digital Image & Culture 