Week 4: Photo Manipulation

Image of the week

Image from instagram.com/sainthoax

I came across this image while i was cruising on Instagram. It's an image of Queen Elizabeth's head on another woman's body. There is this fresh sense of humour in this image and it's also very adorable, combining images and being experimental. I want to explore image manipulation this week. I always find this image manipulation technique very impressive as it requires a lot of imagination.

Manipulated photography includes any steps during the taking of the photograph through to the creation of the final image that alter the "truth" of the visible world. This might include the selection of capture methods (i.e. infrared) that alter the reality of the visual image prior to capture, through the handworking of negatives so common with Pictorial photography, hand-colouring or the post-processing of digital images in Lightroom, Photoshop or other software. It can include scratching negatives, writing on prints, collage, photomontage or the intentional, or unintentional, burning of prints.

1865 Julia Margaret Cameron, The Adoration

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This image by Julia Margaret Cameron is intentionally made blurry, soft and with a slight focus. She manipulated the image by adding a photo of a baby below the image of the 3 women where their gaze conveniently meets the unconscious baby. I'm not sure if the baby is alive or sleeping but this photo combination definitely got the viewers contemplating.

1913, Composite photograph of child laborers made from cotton mill children [National Child Labor Committee (U.S.)]

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Composite portraits is a composition of using two or more negatives to create a portrait designed to show the characteristics of a class of people.

1937, Pierre Boucher, Chute des corps

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This is one image that i find relatable to today's kind of photo collage. In a way it transcends time? I can imagine seeing this on Pinterest, Instagram or other social media platforms. It gives a sense of freedom, where the photos of the bodies are placed on top of the sky for this effect - evokes a sense of emancipation.

1944, Solarization

Solarized Hat & Profile, Erwin Blumenfeld, New York, 1944

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The accidental rediscovery of solarization by Man Ray and his model and lover Lee Miller was a process that the Dadaists and Surrealists loved. They appreciated the fact that a new process could be found by the chance encounter of a foot with a mouse in the darkroom meaning light was urgently required and that the flash of light could convert the commonplace print into a new form of mysterious reality. Solarization, the term Man Ray proposed, has nothing to do with the sun rather it is the 'Sabattier effect' (named after the French scientist Armand Sabattier who discovered it in 1862) that creates an image that is part negative and part positive and is created by exposing the print to light part way through the darkroom development process. The level of solarization is dependent upon the stage of development, the level of light the partially developed print is exposed to, and the amount of time it is exposed.

2001, Annegret Soltau, Self Portrait

N.Y.FACES - chirurgische Operationen 21.11.2001

"The attack of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York was what triggered the series entitled N.Y.FACES. These works are composed of passport photos and close-ups of my dental operation. On the reverse sides, I included news reports from the period of the attack that I had torn out of the papers. The mouth, especially, plays an important role in revealing pain and violence, and here I purposely show a mouth, wide open, as an expression of the most intense feelings."

Look how photo manipulation has come a long way and how it's so carefully thought out conceptually and aesthetically even though it seems both visually appalling and intriguing at the same time. The way the photo was stitched up and mouth on the face is so confronting.. the colour is also somehow rather matching which pulls this entire image together despite it being a collage.

Source: http://www.annegret-soltau.de/en/galleries/n-y-faces-2001-02/artworks/n-y-faces-chirurgische-operationen-21-11-2001

2013, Walk on the beach, Sarah Eisenlohr

In her artist statement Montana based artist Sarah Eisenlohr explains that her collages use places of existence to create fictional ones in an effort to demonstrate the ways in which humans have transformed the earth. These scenes often carry undertones of spirituality and faith. “I consider the figures’ desire for shelter, warmth, and something stronger than themselves as symbols of serenity that I seek through spirituality, while the use of sublime in my work points to a relationship with the divine,” explained Eisenlohr. Eisenlohr uses the collage as a medium in order to transplant the influence of humanity on images of idealized untouched landscapes culled from vintage magazines.

I really enjoy the type of vibe in this collage, it has vintage hues in it and it's so amazing and imaginative of Eisenlohr to play with depth, size and composition. I love it.

Source: https://lonewolfmag.com/contemporary-surrealist-collages/