An imaginary world composed of photorealistic inanimate, human, and plant objects spurs a psychological impact upon the viewer.

Photomontage showing what a complete iceberg might look like under water. An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater Ice that has broken off from a snow-formed Glacier or Ice shelf and is floating in open water

Photomontage is the process (and result) of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. The same method is accomplished today using image-editing software. The technique is referred to by professionals as "compositing", and in casual usage is often called "photoshopping". ^[1]

History

Author Oliver Grau in his book Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion notes that the creation of artificial immersive environments, arising as a result of technical exploitation of new inventions, is a long-standing human practice throughout the ages. Such environments as dioramas were made of composited images. The word diorama can refer either to a nineteenth century mobile theatre device or in modern usage a three-dimensional model usually enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum

The first and most famous mid-Victorian photomontage (then called combination printing) was "The Two Ways of Life" (1857) by Oscar Rejlander, followed shortly by the pictures of photographer Henry Peach Robinson such as "Fading Away" (1858). Oscar Gustave Rejlander ( Sweden 1813 &ndash Clapham, London on 18 January, 1875) was a pioneering Victorian art photographer Henry Peach Robinson ( July 9, 1830 in Ludlow, Shropshire – February 21, 1901) was an English Pictorialist These works actively set out to challenge the then-dominant painting and theatrical tableau vivants. Painting (pān'tīng in Art, is the practice of applying Color to a Surface (support base such as e Tableau vivant (plural tableaux vivants) is French for "living picture

Fantasy photomontaged postcards were popular in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Many of the early examples of fine-art photomontage consist of photographed elements superimposed on watercolours, a combination returned to by (e. g. ) George Grosz in about 1915. George Grosz ( July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings Year 1915 ( MCMXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year He was part of the Dada movement in Berlin which was instrumental in making montage into a modern art-form. For other meanings see Dada (disambiguation DaDa is a Concept album by Alice Cooper, released They first coined the term "photomontage" at the end of the war, around 1918 or 1919. The other major exponents were John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann and Johannes Baader. John Heartfield ( June 19, 1891 – April 26, 1968) is the anglicized name of the German Photomontage artist Hannah Höch ( November 1, 1889 – May 31, 1978) was a German Dada artist Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters ( 20 June 1887 - 8 January 1948) was a German painter who was born in Raoul Hausmann (July 12 1886 &ndash February 1 1971 was an Austrian artist and writer Johannes Baader ( June 22, 1875 &ndash January 15, 1955) originally trained as an Architect, was a Writer and Artist Individual photos combined together to create a new subject or visual image proved to be a powerful tool for the Dadists protesting World War I and the interests that they believed inspired the war. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Photomontage survived Dada and was a technique inherited and used by European Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí. Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech 1st Marquis of Púbol (May 11 1904 &ndash January 23 1989 was a Spanish Catalan Surrealist The world's first retrospective show of photomontage was held in Germany in 1931. A later term coined in Europe was "photocollage"; which usually referred to large and ambitious works that added typography and brushwork or even actual objects stuck to the photomontage.

Parallel to the Germans, Russian Constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko and the husband-and-wife team of Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina created pioneering photomontage work as propaganda for the Soviet government. Constructivism was an Artistic and architectural movement in Russia from 1919 onward which rejected the idea of " Art for art's sake " (Лазарь Маркович Лисицкий על ליסיצקי November 23 1890 – December 30 1941 better known as El Lissitzky (Эль Лисицкий was a Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (Александр Михайлович Родченко – December 3, 1956) was a Russian Artist, sculptor Gustav Klutsis ( Latvian: Gustavs Klucis, Russian: Густав Густавович Клуцис (b Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people A soviet (сове́т, "council" originally was a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia. In the education sphere, media arts director Rene Acevedo and Adrian Brannan have left their mark on art classrooms the world over. Adrian Brannan is a contemporary artist who works mainly in the medium of photo collage focusing on cityscapes as his most frequently chosen subject matter

Following his exile to Mexico in the late 1930s, Spanish Civil War activist and montage artist Joseph Renau compiled his acclaimed Fata Morgana USA: the American Way of Life, a book of photomontaged images highly critial of Americana and North American "consumer culture". Americana refers to artifacts of the Culture of the United States, the history and folklore resultant from its Westward expansion. ^[2] His contemprary, Lola Alvarez Bravo experimented with photomontages on life and social issues in Mexican cities. Lola Álvarez Bravo (1907 - 1993 was a Mexican Photographer. ( Álvarez Bravo is her surname She was a key figure (along with Tina Modotti,

In Argentina during the late 1940s, the German exile Grete Stern began to contribute photomontaged work on the theme of Sueños (Dreams), as part of a regular psychoanalytical article in Idilio magazine. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. ^[3]

The pioneering techniques of the early photomontage artists were co-opted by the advertising industry from the late 1920s onwards.

Techniques

Other methods for combining pictures are also called photomontage, such as Victorian "combination printing", the printing from more than one negative on a single piece of printing paper (e. g. O. G. Rejlander, 1857), front-projection and computer montage techniques. Oscar Gustave Rejlander ( Sweden 1813 &ndash Clapham, London on 18 January, 1875) was a pioneering Victorian art photographer Much like a collage is composed of multiple facets, artists also combine montage techniques. A collage (From the coller to glue is a work of formal art primarily in the Visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms thus creating a new whole Romare Bearden's (1912-1988) series of black and white "photomontage projections" is an example. Romare Bearden ( September 2, 1911 &ndash March 12, 1988) was an African-American Artist and Writer. His method began with compositions of paper, paint, and photographs put on boards 8 1/2x11 inches. Bearden fixed the imagery with an emulsion that he then applied with handroller. Subsequently, he enlarged the collages photographically.

The 19th century tradition of physically joining multiple images into a composite and photographing the results prevailed in press photography and offset lithography until the widespread use of digital image editing. Offset printing is a commonly used Printing technique where the Inked image is transferred (or "offset" from a plate to a rubber blanket then to the Image editing encompasses the processes of altering Images whether they be digital photographs traditional analog photographs or Illustrations Contemporary photo editors in magazines now create "paste-ups” digitally.

Creating a photomontage has, for the most part, become easier with the advent of computer software such as Adobe Photoshop, Pixel image editor, and GIMP (see figure below). Pixel image editor (formerly known as Pixel32 is an Image editor written by the Slovak programmer Pavel Kanzelsberger The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a free Raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs

Figura 2 - Photomontage from two photos

These programs make the changes digitally, allowing for faster workflow and more precise results. They also mitigate mistakes by allowing the artist to "undo" errors. Yet some artists are pushing the boundaries of digital image editing to create extremely time-intensive compositions that rival the demands of the traditional arts. The current trend is to create pictures that combine painting, theatre, illustration and graphics in a seamless photographic whole.

The ethics of photomontage

A photomontage may contain elements at once real and imaginary. Two-dimensional representation of physical space in a picture is, by definition, an illusion. Such combined photos and digital manipulation can set up a collision between aesthetics and ethics - for instance, in faked news photographs that are presented to the world as real. Aesthetics or esthetics ( also spelled æsthetics) is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values sometimes called Ethics is a major branch of Philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life In the United States, for example, the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) have set out a Code of Ethics promoting the accuracy of published images, advising that photographers "do not manipulate images [. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the NPPA is the acronym for the National Press Photographers Association founded in 1947. . . ] that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects. "^[4]

See: Photojournalism. Photojournalism is a particular form of Journalism (the collecting editing and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast that creates images in order to tell

Scrapbooking photo-collage

Photomontage can also be present in the scrapbooking phenomenon, in which family images are pasted into scrapbooks and collaged along with paper ephemera and decorative items. Scrapbooking is a method for preserving personal and family history in the form of photographs printed media and memorabilia contained in decorated albums or scrapbooks

Digital scrapbooking employs a computer to create simple collaged designs and captions. The amateur scrapbooker can turn home projects into professional output, such as CDs, DVDs, display on TV, or uploaded to a website for viewing or assembly into one or more books for sharing.

See: Scrapbooking

Photo manipulation

Main article: Photo manipulation

Photo manipulation refers to taking a regular real life image and changing it into another real-looking image but with a different look to it. Scrapbooking is a method for preserving personal and family history in the form of photographs printed media and memorabilia contained in decorated albums or scrapbooks Photo manipulation is the application of Image editing techniques to Photographs in order to create an Illusion or Deception (in contrast to mere For example, taking a photo of a desert with pyramids and then making it look like the pyramids are on grass with more clouds behind them.

Artists known for photomontage

Key photomontage artists include the following, listed alphabetical order:

References

• "It's hard to tell where pixels end and reality begins," The San Francisco Chronicle; September 26, 2006.
• "Fantasy, fairy tale and myth collide in images: By digitally altering photos of landscapes, artist Anthony Goicolea creates an intriguing world," The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia); June 19, 2006.
• "Life through a lens: A different perspective," Ealing Times; January 3, 2006.
• Greek Olympics; Outdoor Advertising Association of America
• "HP Celebrates America's Inventiveness by Creating World's Largest Digital Image," HP website. See also Business Wire; June 12, 2002.
• "A Portrait of Goldwater Is a Computer-Aided Mosaic of His Own," The Chronicle of Higher Education; February 1, 2002.
• "Musings on Collage: The Photomontages of Romare Bearden," The New York Times; May 11, 1997.
• Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg. ) „Eve of Destruction. Draußen ist Krieg, drinnen auch“ (Schellerten 2005) (z. m. a. K. ) ISBN 3-88842-029-6;

Further reading

• Photomontage (World of Art series) by Dawn Ades. Thames & Hudson, 1989;
• Jürgen Holtfreter: Politische Fotomontage (Berlin/West: Elefanten Press Galerie 1975) ISBN 978-3885200161;
• Brigitte Tast, Hans-Jürgen Tast: Als Lena schlief (Düsseldorf 1980) ISBN 978-3-88842-201-0;
• Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg. ): Edith Lechtape. Gossenportraits (Schellerten 1996) ISBN 978-3-88842-202-7;
• Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg. ): Eve of Destruction. Draußen ist Krieg, drinnen auch (Schellerten 2005) ISBN 978-3-88842-029-0;
• Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg. ): Edith Lechtape. Schauspielerin - Photobildnerin. 1921-2001 (Schellerten 2007) ISBN 978-3-88842-032-0;
• Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press 2002; Cambridge, Mass. ISBN 0-262-57223-0;
• Adobe Master Class: Photoshop Compositing with John Lund, Adobe Press, 2003;

See also

• Photo mosaic
• Photo editing
• Composograph
• Surrealist techniques
• Collage
• Cubism
• Scrapbooking
• Surrealism

External links

• Photomontage Artists
• A timeline of fantastic photomontage and its possible influences, 1857 - 2007
• Cut & Paste: a history of photomontage
• Composite Photographs Historical essay on William Notman, with video clips. In the field of photographic imaging a photographic mosaic (also known under the term Photomosaic, a Portmanteau of photo and Mosaic, trademarked Composograph refers to a retouched photographic collage popularized by publisher and Physical culture advocate Bernarr Macfadden in his New York Graphic Surrealism in Art, Poetry, and Literature utilizes numerous unique techniques and games to provide inspiration A collage (From the coller to glue is a work of formal art primarily in the Visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms thus creating a new whole Cubism was a 20th century Avant-garde Art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European Scrapbooking is a method for preserving personal and family history in the form of photographs printed media and memorabilia contained in decorated albums or scrapbooks Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members
• Interactive Digital Photomontage - a technical paper on a semi-automated approach to photomontage, published at SIGGRAPH 2004. Interactive Digital Photomontage is GPL software for interactive digital Photomontages It was jointly developed by University of Washington and Microsoft SIGGRAPH (short for S pecial I nterest G roup on GRAPH ics and Interactive Techniques is the name of the annual conference on Computer graphics
• Digital Dream Collage - digital collage/photomontage by Paul DiLascia.