NZPhotographer Issue 56, June 2022

COLLAGE PIONEERS
Before the recent invention of auto collage software,
there were photographic pioneers of the photo
collage. David Hockney is probably one of the bestknown
people. He took lots of photos of the one
subject, but from different angles and knitted them all
together in a collage. What’s really interesting about his
work is that his collages are not squares or rectangles.
They are an organic growth of knitted images.
I have imitated his style for this article (see photo on
page 13) by taking around 30 images using the same
settings (F5.6, 1/100s, ISO800, 55mm) for each shot
but varying my light source and the subject’s pose. I
selected 15 of the 30 images for the final collage.
I shot from different angles by moving around my
subject and then doing the same thing by popping pink
cellophane over the softbox light in the studio. Hockey
did not chop up his photos, but I did choose to crop my
individual photos into various rectangular shapes. I then
placed each image in what I felt was an organic merger
to create an overall aesthetic based on Hockney. Some
people do this with polaroids and glue them together.
Either way, it’s not as neat or rigid as collaging in the
traditional sense, but I like the look of something that
emerges from the screen or page in a chaotic flow like this.
Another pioneer of collage is John Baldessari. In the 1980s,
he started a movement by putting colourful price stickers
on photos. He stated he could not understand why painting
was defined as art, but photography was defined as
photography. He wanted to combine the two and explore
a new genre. He photographed anything and everything
that took his fancy and covered the subject’s faces with
price stickers and later on with paint. This is an ideal place to
start experimenting with printed or digital collage; either print
your photo and replace a part of it with a coloured shape
like Baldessari has or make a digital version in Photoshop.
Open your chosen image in Photoshop or another
image editor, select adjustments, desaturate, and then
select the shape tool and draw a coloured shape over
the desired spot. Below is one I tried in Baldessari’s style
following that process.
There is no reason to limit yourself to just popping
coloured shapes on your photos. Some photographers
are now starting to replace entire subjects with printed
newspapers or colour them in with paint. I have also
seen photographers print their photos, glue them to
a cardboard backing and then sew patterns into the
image. To my mind, this combines the best of what
Beladessari was referring to.
Traditional collage in art is to glue different images
and materials together to form a picture and then
add paint, dyes, or ink. Photography that is used as the
base layer for a collage can create a powerful mixed
media piece, especially if you can think of a way that
The physical additions to your printed image can add
emphasis to the conventions of Art. Hannah Hoch,
John Stezaker, Jese Treece, and Annegret Soltau are all
collage artists who used photography and other media
to produce some incredible work, Google them and be
inspired!
My digital collage based on Baldessari’s style.