photo-collage
cManipulating photographs is something I have done since my master’s thesis back in 1972! Back then I dodged, burned, solarized, adding drawing, even physically cut and pasted photographs together. In the 1990’s when I returned to an active artistic practice after my children were big enough to allow that, I realized that one photograph was not enough to say what I wanted to say so I cut holes in doors and windows, cut out ceilings, removed parts of buildings, manipulating architecture so I could add landscape to it. I called them “photo-collage.” APA labs in Atlanta could print huge prints for me from 4x5 negatives and some of them got big enough to require a full sheet of mat board for the mat. Two nice ladies were admiring an image of a bathroom with the mirror cut out to reveal an inserted landscape and one said to the other “ What a nice view they have in that bathroom.” I wanted that kind of trompe d’oeil effect, for just a minute, to pull the viewer’s leg a little.
It wasn’t a great leap from that to Photoshop which is how these things are executed today. With Photoshop I can now play with transparency when I blend architecture and landscape. It’s fun and it requires the same kind of encyclopedic array of images from which to choose. I still use film, 120mm now. I move around too fast for a 4x5 camera. Now I develop the film in my small darkroom on the coast and scan it on a big Epson scanner. Though I can still produce silver gelatin prints, I now prefer ink jet. It’s easier and I have more control over the results.
It wasn’t a great leap from that to Photoshop which is how these things are executed today. With Photoshop I can now play with transparency when I blend architecture and landscape. It’s fun and it requires the same kind of encyclopedic array of images from which to choose. I still use film, 120mm now. I move around too fast for a 4x5 camera. Now I develop the film in my small darkroom on the coast and scan it on a big Epson scanner. Though I can still produce silver gelatin prints, I now prefer ink jet. It’s easier and I have more control over the results.
