The Alluring Art of Photomontage
Photomontage work includes various types of image editing in which multiple photographs are cut up and combined to form one new image. This can involve cutting up printed images, which is how magazine editors used to design publications before digital design software existed — creating layouts called pasteups. But now, digital design tools like Adobe Photoshop make it easier than ever to bring imaginative scenes to life using existing imagery, without paste or paper cuts. When performed digitally, photomontage can also be called compositing.
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/photomontage.html
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/photomontage.html
History of Photomontage
Back in the mid-nineteenth century, combination printing, an early type of photo manipulation, paved the way for photomontage. Combination printing was the process of developing one image using multiple negatives. This process was necessary because it was difficult to get various light levels to expose well at the same time, but it soon led to photographers creating more imaginative photographic images than ever before. Art photographer Oscar Rejlander helped pioneer early experimentation in combination printing and went on to create the first well-known photo montage, The Two Ways of Life, in 1857.
Oscar Rejlander, "Two Ways of Life," 1857
German Dadaists in the mid- to late 1910s, like Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, and Kurt Schwitters, used photomontage as a way to make images that channeled their anti-fascist beliefs. Similar were the artists in the Russian constructivist movement, such as Alexander Rodchenko and Gustav Klutsis, who incorporated typography and graphic design in their angular collages. During the same era, Man Ray and Salvador Dali were associated with cubism and the surrealist painting movement; they created dream-like photomontages that played with perspective and the human form. Photomontage then became a facet of pop art into the seventies and eighties, adopted by British conceptual artists like John Stezaker and David Hockney, who explored patterns, repetition, and the recycling of commercial images. Look up work by these artists for inspiration.
El Lissitzky, 1920
Utilizing art for a social and political change, El Lissitzky was a Russian painter, designer, and typographer. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Lissitzky experimented with the latest media such as typography, photography, and photomontage. This is considered as his most progressive period. For him, photography was the most efficient way to express the dynamic reshaping of his country.
Uelsmann is a master printer, producing composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images, and has a large archive of negatives that he has shot over the years. The negatives that Uelsmann uses are known to reappear within his work, acting as a focal point in one work, and background as another. Similar in technique to Rejlander, Uelsmann is a champion of the idea that the final image need not be tied to a single negative, but may be composed of many.
https://www.all-about-photo.com/photographers/photographer/105/jerry-uelsmann
https://www.all-about-photo.com/photographers/photographer/105/jerry-uelsmann
Thomas Barbey, "Piano Peace"
David Hockney, "Pearblossom Hwy," 1986
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David Hockney, "Joiners"
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Contemporary Photomontage Artists
Dan Mountford's Double Exposures, 2011
Christoffer Relander, 2012
Aneta Ivanova, 2013
Antonio Mora
Maggie Taylor began her photographic career through the use of old snapshots, objects, and bits of text to create three-dimensional collages which she then photographed. What resulted were surreal,intriguing and often whimsical images, created through a combination of these various elements and, more recently, Adobe Photoshop, for whom she also does graphic work. Since 1986 Taylor has worked exclusively with still-life arrangements. Taylor has said that she wishes “the viewer to experience a convergence of factual memory and fictional daydream similar to my own.”
"This is Not Photography" - Photomontages byJerry Uelsmann & Maggie Taylor
The Masters of Photomontage
Amelie Satzger - The Art of Photo Storytelling: Translate Messages into Images
Renee Robyn
How to Create a Photomontage in Photoshop
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