Photomontage.

Photomontage is the art of putting 2 or more photos together to produce a new artwork. This was the first developed during the middle of the Victorian period with the likes of Oscar Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson. In modern days this is usually made from editing suites electronically rather than multiple exposures and cutting various photographs up to make a new work.

Unfortunately for me, I am still waiting for my licence to be downloaded (as I was going to make a couple electronically) so I had to come up with plan B which was to cut up some magazines and come up with an original work.

The first montage I came up with was looking at work by Peter Kennard. Looking at his simplistic looks I tried to keep all 3 pretty simple (as it shows that striking images and conceptual can be achieved without much clutter). This photo was achieved with using 2 heads of women combined with a tree frog and a photo of a Dutch tulips in a park. I just happened to like the mood that this one give me.

The second montage I came up with is to cut up a black and white landscape photograph and to turn each other part of the print 180 degrees to come up with the desired effect. This gives the whole photograph a different feeling than before. It feels a lot moodier than the original picture gave out.

  The last montage consisted of cutting out the bokah of one photograph and working with various other photos to gain the desired look. The dove was a cut out from an old Christmas card and I also cut out another landscape photograph into parts and see how this relates to the background. Overall I try to keep a flying theme to this montage as a feeling of freedom.

As a conclusion, I was not entirely happy with this experience. I really wanted to use my own photographs for this project but, until I can load up photoshop, I was limited in options to come up with a montage (our printer is just not good enough to come up with prints to be used on this project). It did give me an experience in putting various photographs to come up with a new composition but I would have rather come up with something with my own photographs.