Morgan Redman:
David Hockney:
My final outcome depicted above is a photomontage, or photo joiner as was the term coined by Hockney, that is a combination of multiple photographs from the same temporal and spatial context but of varied compositions culminating in one final photographic response. My photograph is of a singular subject in a studio environment captured against a black backdrop and was edited together digitally using the editing software Photoshop CC 2014. This final photograph is successful in respect of the consideration of composition and how the images could later be connected and the way in which they overlap the background of the original image. Furthermore, aspects of how the photograph could be exaggerated in a surreal way lead to changes in scale and finally the number of shots captured that resulted in a more dynamic response to the focus of photomontage.
The photographic artwork captured by Hockney is a photo joiner which was created as an exploration of the medium of photography, as a deviation from his focus on painting, and was also an attempt of a creative self-portrait breaking the norms of portraiture at the time. As an artist, Hockney did not have a photographic studio and as such his photo joiner portraits and landscapes were captured in any context. The success of this technique when applied to the self-portrait is one that allows for many inferences such as ideas around emotions, sense of identity and so on making the technique a prominent skill still employed in modern photography. Moreover, the camera used to create the final photograph compilation was a polaroid instant camera which meant that the final results were less predictable and yet the images work extremely well as a cohesive piece of photographic art. The layering of the images also shows what the artists deemed to be more important in relation to the self-portrait and as such one of the top layers is a hand holding a cigarette and the repeated element of his glasses. This is so successful that it has inspired many photographers and has also served as an influence on my personal project.
This technique, when attributed to Hockney's photo joiners and not photomontage, was formed when Hockney himself was using a polaroid camera to photograph his apartment and join the images together so that he could paint a piece of art based from his surroundings; when the images were combined he found the technique to be an interesting exploration of photography but he soon returned to paint after deciding that photography was too limited. In contrast to that, I used a modern DSLR camera that is far less prone to variables such as natural lighting, development process and such. Additionally, another difference between the final photographs is that the framing and composition of Hockney's collage photographs are limited to the instant film whereas my photograph were captured on a digital camera and could be edited using computer software meaning that I was able to change the scale and framing of my final outcome. Despite this, significant similarities between the two final photographs include that both are portraits, both are layered on a black background and the technique employed is the same. Whilst some elements are coincidental such as the black backdrop the technique that I utilised was directly inspired by the work of Hockney. To expand this investigation further I could have considered using the skill when capturing landscapes as Hockney did not limit the technique to solely portraiture.
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