Photomontage: Research

Photomontage is a montage technique that involves using photographs to create a montage...not surprising if I'm honest. You can either do it by hand, such as artist Man Ray or nowadays you can use photograph editing software (e.g. Photoshop) and I started researching photomontage. For this unit we investigated many ideas such as composite images and creating images using masks and other photographs (fruitman!)->

My initial idea for the montage stemmed from the photomontage work of David Hockney and the portrait of painter Andy Worhol by fellow painter Jackson Dainty. I was looking through various montage artists but what struck me about Hockney's work was how he would reconstruct faces using only a  couple of very similar polaroids. I love how abstract the final product is and my favourite from his portfolio was this montage he did of his mother (aww!). However I felt that with my minimal knowledge of PS I would struggle to create something this complex. I was looking at different artists and painters who also messed about with the colour and composition; as it happens I am interested in pop art. That's when I came across this painter called Jackson Dainty who did a cool portrait of Worhol that stood out to me and I decided to try to combine the two things...kind of...I decided to do a montage similar to Worhol's portrait below however instead using 4 different photographs of myself from my childhood...I considered experimenting with colour (so it would turn out similar to Dainty's painting) however I decided to keep it simple and I wanted it to look like a photograph at the end of the day instead of a painting... My ultimate aim was to make the montage 'slick' and 'not very obvious'...

David Hockney's Photomontage
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Jackson Dainty's Painting

I then set off finding the images I was going to use...first I decided that I would use only one digital image and  I would scan in the other three. I chose my digital photograph which is a recent self portrait I took of myself and decided to use this as the 'base' i.e. I would layer the other three on top of this one.

I then needed to select the other three photographs. This meant having to sift through our hundreds of photographs...once I had overcome my dust allergy triggered by the cloud of dust that was released when I opened the photo box. I learnt many things whilst looking through the endless sea of photographs...mainly that my father cannot pull off a moustache and if I really wanted to I could catalogue my mothers life through her various hairstyles but I digress. When selecting the photographs I would use for my montage I was careful to choose photographs where I was more or less facing the camera perfectly because that would help me fit the photographs together later on. Once I had chosen my final few (I chose about 10 to mess around with) I scanned them at home using our 2-in1 scanner and printer (standard Epson printer...nothing special). I ensured that they were  scanned at 300 ppi so that I would be able to manipulate them in PS later. I now had everything prepared for creating my image...