Jeremy Wolff Photo Collage
Photo collage was developed, most notably, by David Hockney in the 80s. I was
inspired by him, and have tried to bring my own perspective to the technique.
Photocollages are large
artworks, usually 3-4 feet wide. I take hundreds of individual snapshots
of the subjects and scene and make color prints. Each piece you see is actually
an individually considered picture, a separate shot. They are the
building blocks I use to create a greater scene. These are not
manipulated digital images, or a large picture cut up. They are constructions
(not deconstructions), re-creations of visual reality within the deceptively
familiar frame of a photograph.
Taking pictures, I'm looking around and time is passing. Viewing a
collage is like looking around--there is a sense of space that can't be
captured in a single image. Multiple images allow me to create movement,
show the passage of time, and play with perspective. These large
assemblages have texture and dimension, as much like painting and sculpture as
photography.
I bring a documentary and
conceptual background to this work--I was a travel writer when photo-collage
took off and became a career. I have made CD and book covers, created ad
campaigns and animated TV commercials, and worked for most major magazines--
Photo collage is an ideal
technique for family portraits and event photography--for showing a group as
individuals. A memory is more than an instant, and photo collage captures
more of the full experience, the energy and fun, of being together.
Thinking @ Photo Collage
When it was invented some
160 years ago, the medium of photography became, in its accuracy of depiction,
the nearly perfect visual form.
Technically, painting had
been advancing mathematically, with Renaissance inventions of perspective
drawing and the camera obscura, and the use of lenses and convex mirrors. This
search for "accurate" perspective in drawing led directly to the
development of photography.
In the visual arts,
Cubism and Impressionism were reactions to this (or parallel developments,
depending on how you look at it). Without its sometime goal of the perfect
two-dimensional instant, painting incorporated the other senses, and time, to
convey more of human experience than its simple visual reproduction.
Photo collage can do
literally what cubism does figuratively: show different angles at the same
time, and different times in a single image. Photo collage emphasizes movement and the passage of time-the truths of
human experience over the truth of photo-chemical precision.
Essential to the medium
of photography is that its product is cheap and infinitely repeatable. That is, the technological advance of this medium is that you can reproduce the work unimaginably well and cheaply. (Which is true of all the new
electric media, CDs DVDs, etc.) Considering what it does, the humble snapshot is
taken for granted.
I consider this folk art.
The materials I use couldn't be more common: snapshots, stuck together with
tape. A single photo print is not expensive or precious, but collaged
photographs reverse the limits of the snapshot: the single point of view and
moment-in-time become multiple perspectives through time. The infinitely
repeatable becomes the unique assemblage.
(Hockney and McLuhan have
of course written extensively about these ideas. These are my thoughts but not
my area of expertise; I welcome corrections.)
contact: jeremy@very.com