Major Project Influences (19): Peter Beard and David Wojnarowicz. Photo-collages and Photo-montages of Images and Text

During this course I have researched the work of leading figures in the history of photo-montage, including John Heartfield and Peter Kennard, whose work predominantly consists of the blending of two or more images. However, I have become increasingly interested in art that consists of the blending of one or more images with (a) passage(s) of text. The written word has the power to create atmosphere and emotion in the mind of the reader, just as an image can. A combination of both has, at least, the potential to amplify these feelings, provided an appropriate juxtaposition can be found. For this reason I have looked at blending text into some of my images during the later stages of the project. Two influences in this area have been the Americans Peter Beard and David Wojnarowicz.

Peter Beard (1938 - )

The writer, artist, photographer and diarist Peter Beard is a true polymath. He has spent much of his life living in Kenya, where he has been a protector of endangered wildlife. He has also been a renowned fashion photographer and was a close friend of, amongst others, Andy Warhol, Karen Blixen and Francis Bacon. However, he is perhaps best known for his amazing diaries (or, perhaps more accurately, journals), which fuse photographs, writing, newspaper cuttings, artwork, food labels and much more to produce intricate, multi-layered, rich visual experiences. I was particularly attracted to the pages in which he has blended images of some of the fashion models that he has worked with together with other material. One example is shown below (Image 1). The rich imagery created by this type of work can certainly produce an emotional response, although the nature of that response is hard to gauge - Beard’s diaries are essentially documenting his life rather than trying to overtly make a political point (although he has been and doubtless still is concerned with political and, in particular, environmental issues).

Image 1 (Peter Beard)

David Wojnarowicz (1954 – 1992)

David Wojnarowicz was a painter, writer, photographer, filmmaker and performance artist, active in the 1980s and early 1990s. Following a troubled childhood he became a part of the New York avant-garde arts community. He was gay and saw many friends, as well as his lover, become victims of the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s. As a consequence of his experiences he became an AIDS activist and his work took on a strongly political content, concentrating on the social and legal injustices inherent in the response to the AIDS epidemic in the USA. Image 2 is one potent example of his work during this period, combining text and images to produce a powerful essay on the injustices felt by sexually active gay people at that time. Wojnarowicz was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and died of an AIDS–related illness in 1992.

Image 2 (David Wojnarowicz)

Comments and Learning Points

The art of Wojnarowicz and Beard has little in common, other than for the fact that both Americans have produced work that merges images and text. Beard’s work is arguably more creative and certainly more complex, as well as having a more pleasing aesthetic. Wojnarowicz’s work is direct, uncompromising and juxtaposes text and imagery to make a strong political point. As such it has the capacity to stir the emotions of the viewer in a different way to that of Beard. Both types of image are equally valid, although perhaps Wojnarowicz’s work is a clearer example of conceptual art. I have developed and tried to fuse some of the ideas displayed in both the images shown here with my own ideas, in order to produce two new images for my photo book – the last two to be inserted. Many other artists combine images (painted, drawn and/or photographed) with text and I suspect that I will investigate this type of work again in the future: it interests me greatly from an artistic perspective. The work of the two artists discussed in this post is therefore a late but very important influence on my output.

Progress Update 30 May 2017

Having received my first draft photo book back from ‘Blurb’ I posted a copy to my tutor, together with a progress update – this constituted my 6^th and final assignment for this course. I’ve now had feedback from him in the form of both a tutor report and a final ‘Skype’ tutorial and I’m very pleased to know that I’m almost finished, with plenty of time to prepare for submission. I can’t believe that after almost 10 years of part-time study, I’ve almost reached the end of my degree course: what will I do with myself afterwards?

The bulk of the feedback concentrated on the design of the photo book. Since I have practically no experience of book design, my tutor’s comments and suggestions in this area were very welcome and much appreciated. These are discussed below, but first I’ll look briefly at the contents of the book.

Book Text and Images

The text and images are fine in their current format. The images (including the new ones) “work harmoniously” and “front and back cover images work well”. I had already planned to correct some technical issues relating to some of the images in the book and I will make these corrections in the next week or two, in order to produce a complete set of images that can go into the final photo book without further alteration. The square format and 50% saturation work, so I will make no changes in this regard. Likewise, the text is fine (as it has been for some time) and could go into the final draft of the book ‘as is’.

However, I will have to make some changes to the text and possibly add more images, in order to accommodate alterations to the design of the book (see below).

Book Design

General Design

·         My tutor felt that the feel and tactility of the book could be considerably improved by losing the gloss cover, although softback (as submitted) was fine. He suggested aiming for the tactile nature of Kennard’s “@earth” book (which I have). As for many of the bullets listed here, he suggested research in the form of looking at and handling a variety of photo books would be invaluable. In the light of these comments I will avoid using gloss on the cover, but will likely switch to a hard cover (as for Kennard’s book) for the final version.

·         He liked the (relatively small) size of the book, making it feel “like a keepsake, or memento”. I had favoured using a slightly larger size (21cm instead of 18cm) for the final version. However, I will probably now retain the original size (if possible), at least for the final draft (see below).

·         The text on the front cover (Times New Roman, bold) was too large and heavy. My tutor also suggested moving the title and author to the bottom of the front cover page, with title aligned left and author aligned right. I’m happy to go along with this, but will consider other options before making a decision.

·         The design, with all photos on the right page, “is classic but works well”.

·         The inside typeface is mismatched: I will alter this.

·         The pages in the draft book were not numbered. There seems little reason to number pages, except for reference purposes if I decide to include explanatory text with my assessment submission. I’ll make a final decision about numbering at a late stage.

Specific Issues

The two biggest issues that I have with regard to the book design are dealt with below.

·         The amount of text that accompanies each image in the book is very variable. On some pages there was so much text that I had to use a smaller font size to accommodate it on a single page. I realised at the time that I would need to do something about this in the final draft of the book, but was hoping that by producing a somewhat larger book I would be able to use the smaller font size throughout and that the text would then be clearly legible. However, my tutor (and I can see his point) felt that I should simply use less text per page, with more space, on every page. This may involve, as he said, “increasing overall size or number of pages”. This leaves me with a significant problem: should I try to remove some sections of text on particularly ‘wordy’ pages in order to produce a roughly consistent amount of text for each page or allow the text to ‘roll over’ onto a second page? In the latter case should I produce additional image montages, use (say) additional Nidderdale landscapes or simply leave the right hand pages adjacent to the ‘roll over’ text blank? Adrian Clarke used a variation on the ‘Nidderdale landscapes’ theme in his book “Gary’s Friends”. This is the one dilemma that remains for me to solve.

·         The one-off ‘graph’ that my tutor and I are both very keen to incorporate into the final book was included in the draft book as a (2:1) ‘letterbox’ sized image across two pages. However, the centre of the graph was, predictably, lost in the guttering. Whilst my tutor has been keen to incorporate the graph as a ‘foldout’, this would be challenging to achieve. I attended a photo book publishers’ fair at the Tate Modern (London) a week ago and had a chat with a knowledgeable gentleman from the “Self-Publish, Be Happy” company. His advice, which I intend to take, was to make the graph the centrefold of a stapled book, when there would be no guttering.

Future Work

I am planning to sort out as many of the outstanding issues relating to the production of a final photo book as I can in the first three weeks of June, before holidays start to eat into my time. My immediate plan of action is to:

·         Make final alterations to the images that I already have, so that they are ready to incorporate in the ‘assessment’ version of my photo book.

·         Make a decision on how to modify the text and whether to produce extra images (see bullet point above) and then carry out the necessary modifications.

·         Make recommended alterations to the cover design.

·         Incorporate the graph as a ‘centrefold’ in the book, once other alterations have been made.

·         Continue researching the design of photo books, then make decisions about the size, tactility, etc. of my final photo book.

·         Research opportunities for self-publishing.

·         Having incorporated all the design alterations, produce a ‘final draft’ template and obtain the book from ‘Blurb’. This book could be used as a ‘fall back’ for assessment if I am unable to produce a stapled, self-published version in time for submission.

I will concentrate on the “last level of experimentation” (self-publishing the photo book, with final alterations) in July and August, prior to submission for assessment. I still plan to produce an accompanying multimedia presentation for assessment (time permitting) and will likewise obtain prints of all the images used in the photo book, during this period. My blog will be developed throughout, until close to submission in September.

Progress Update 2 May 2017

I’ve now received my draft photo book back from ‘Blurb’ and had a good look through it. Overall I’m reasonably happy with the design and feel of the book, although I can see a number of ways in which it can be improved (discussed below). I hope that a further iteration of the book should see me reach the final product. More advice from my tutor will be sought and I am prepared to change, add and/or remove images in order to produce the final version. I’ve actioned some (mainly technical) changes to the current images, but I don’t envisage making more than a tiny number of alterations to the text. The key questions to answer are whether the images in the book work artistically, whether they enhance the emotions invoked by the text, whether they fit together from a stylistic point of view and whether they tell the story of my relationship with my mother in her final years in a way that encourages empathy in the viewer/reader. The front and back covers of the draft (by no means certain to be used in the final product) are shown in the image below.

Covers for Draft Photo Book

There are (mostly) minor technical issues with specific images, which will be rectified if the images are retained, before a final draft is produced. The following general comments can be made.

General Comments on the Photo Book

·         The book (7” square; soft cover) feels too small and lightweight. Ideally I’d like it to be 20-25cm square and have a hard cover. ‘Blurb’ only does 7” and 12” square sizes, so I should research other book-making companies as I think that 12” square is too large.

·         I’m happy with the general presentation (text on the left, images on the right with a full ‘bleed’).

·         There are some issues with images ‘disappearing’ into the spine: these will be addressed for the next (final?) version.

·         Ideally I would like slightly bigger margins around the text.

·         Should the pages be numbered (at the moment they are not)? Numbering (LHS only) might assist the assessors and also help during the preparation of the book, but should not be necessary for the general reader.

·         The shorter passages of text should be placed consistently on each page (Centrally? Near the top?) in the next iteration: at the moment there are some disparities between the pages of text.

·         I have introduced single ‘prologue’ and ‘epilogue’ double pages of an image and corresponding text. These have, together with the main story, been given title pages with faint images of Nidderdale landscapes in the background. I like this idea, but have not yet consulted my tutor about it. Does this idea work?

·         Do I make an effort to separate out the two ‘clinical depression intermission’ double pages (two pages of text, two images) from the main work, relating to my relationship with my mother, which is on either side of this text? Likewise, do I separate out the unique double page graph in some way?

General Comments on the Text

·         I used a ‘Times New Roman’ font for the text (‘Blurb’ doesn’t offer my favoured ‘Calibri’). I’m happy with the font, but still open to alternative suggestions.

·         The font size is consistent on most of the pages but in one or two cases I had to use a smaller font size in order to fit all the text onto a single page. I must ensure that the font size is consistent throughout in the final book, which I could do in the following ways: (a) alter the font size for all the text to the smaller font size – this should read ok in a larger book; (b) reduce the amount of text for the pages where a smaller font size has been used by re-writing the text; (c) split the longer passages of text into two and incorporate additional images. I currently favour the ‘easy’ option (a), but am open to alternatives.

·         I have used ‘justify’ rather than ‘align text left’. This is my preferred option, but I am open to the alternative option if a good argument can be put forward for it.

·         I would like to make the right hand margin slightly larger, so that there is no chance of the text disappearing into the spine of the book in (say) a hard copy edition.

·         I would like to somehow differentiate the two pages of text relating to clinical depression from the rest of the text, since this represents an ‘intermission’ in my story. How do I do this? See also the final bullet of ‘General Comments on the photo book’ above.

General Comments on the Images

·         The images have all (with the exception of the monochrome first image of my mother, taken in 1940, and the final colour image of my mother, taken on her 80^th birthday) been produced as 50% saturated. This, together with the square format of the images, benefits consistency of style. Does this format work in book form? I think that it does, but I can change to full colour or modify the saturation level to any degree if necessary.

·         Some images need to be moved a little right (i.e. away from the spine of the book) in order to demonstrate key features, but generally there is no issue with them ‘disappearing’ into the spine of the book in this particular ‘Blurb’ soft cover edition.

·         This minor issue aside, the full bleed appears to work well.

·         Does the design of the new prologue, main title and epilogue pages, using faint images of Nidderdale landscapes as background, work?

·         Some of the images, particularly those in the first half of the book, have printed out a little too dark or light in places. These images will be altered, if they are retained for the final version.

·         Following my tutor’s comments on the set of images that I submitted for my last assignment (Assignment 5) and a reappraisal of the connection between the text, images and the emphasis of the book I have introduced one additional new image, replaced another image, drastically altered a third and made significant modifications to a few others. The artistic and technical content of these images need to be discussed with my tutor, in addition to the points raised above.

Hopefully, once the issues described above have been addressed, I will be in a good position to produce a final photo book. I also intend to produce a multimedia presentation, with video, but will wait until the image set has been finalised before getting round to this.

Progress Update 12 April 2017

My major project work is moving inexorably forwards and yesterday (11 April) I completed a first draft of my photo book for publication and sent it off to ‘Blurb’ for printing. When I receive the book later in the month I will, for the first time, be able to look at a hard copy version of the result of 18 months’ worth of project work. I have asked for two copies of the book; one for myself and one to send to my tutor for feedback. I am under no illusions that there is still work to do before I complete the project, but I hope that the second draft of the photo book will be the final version.

Following my tutor’s feedback from the 5^th (penultimate) assignment and my own review of the project work to date I made some minor revisions to the text, splitting one section of text into two in order to incorporate one additional montage. I then reviewed each of my images in turn, looking both for technical faults or problems as well as for ways in which I could introduce greater emotion and/or clarity into the montages. Following the review I made minor changes to most of the images, major changes to a few images and also replaced one image with a new one (although I retained the same basic idea in this last case). I produced one new image, to incorporate with a section of ‘split’ text (see above). The square format and 50% desaturated ‘style’ for the images was retained for the book – I have the option of using full colour if the printed images look too ‘washed out’. I did consider using monochrome for the images, but although this works well in many cases there are problems with a few of the montages.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what images to use for the front and back covers. For a long time I planned to use a new montage (one that did not directly relate to any of the images inside the book). However, I could not come up with a montage or single image that successfully summarised the content of the photo book. Eventually, having looked at many published photo book covers in shops, on the internet and in “The Photobook: a History Volume 3”, I decided to place a pared down version of one of the early images in the book on the front cover (Image 1) and a portion of another image on the back cover. Both images reflect ‘memories’ and the documentary nature of the project. The covers are, of course, subject to later change.

Image 1

I changed the title of the book on several occasions, but in the end reverted to “I Am Not There”. This is the title of the poem which I have included towards the end of the book, but also relates to the guilt, foreboding and other emotions that I experienced when I was not with my mother or even when I was with her but was unable to give her appropriate emotional support.

I have used ‘Blurb’ before to publish photo books and know how to handle their ‘Bookwright’ software, so it was relatively easy to produce the book template by combining the text and images. I asked for a soft cover book. I will seek advice and consider other photo book producers before producing the final version for assessment. This book will most likely have a hard cover.

Having completed the draft photo book I do not intend to ‘rest on my laurels’. I will produce large square prints of all the images used in the book (for studying fine detail and also possibly for submission for assessment). I still intend to produce a multimedia file, including video, potentially for assessment and am always looking for new ideas for montages in order to add to or replace those that I have already produced. However, replacement of images at this late stage of the project will only be done with good reason. I have one tutorial and one assignment left before assessment and I intend to use these to iron out any remaining faults and problems with the format and design of the images and photo book.

Major Project Influences (18) and Book Review: Richard Billingham - "Ray's a Laugh"

(Re-printed edition by Errata Editions (New York) as part of their "Books on Books" series)

It would be remiss of anybody attempting to produce a photo book referencing members of their own family not to cite Richard Billingham’s classic photo book, ‘Ray’s a Laugh’, first published in 1996, as being of relevance. The book, which features Billingham’s photos of his dysfunctional family (in particular his father Ray, who was an unemployed chronic alcoholic), has become a classic of post-modernist photographic realism. The photos were taken between 1990 (when Billingham was 20) and 1996, shortly before the book was published. I first saw some of Billingham’s prints of his family a few years ago in an exhibition at The Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge. However, the book has long been out of print and copies of the first edition (the original print run was for 3000 books) sell second hand for several hundred pounds – well beyond what I would be prepared to pay for it. Luckily the book has recently been made available as a ‘facsimile’ edition as part of a series by Errata Books (New York) and I have purchased a copy. Although the quality of the prints in this new edition is poor the power and emotional charge of the published photographs is still very evident.

What I find remarkable about this book is not the powerful day to day photo-realism of seeing a socially deprived ‘problem family’ living a disempowered day to day existence on the bread line, but the fact that the photographs were taken by a member of that family, somebody who had the strong will and artistic drive to move to the University of Sunderland to study for an art degree whilst regularly still returning and re-integrating with his family and taking more photographs of them. When Billingham started taking photographs of his family his parents had separated and he lived with his father, taking intimate and emotionally charged photographs of Ray that were for his own personal use – Image 1 is a typical example.

Image 1. Ray (Richard Billingham: "Ray's a Laugh")

Later, Ray moved back in with Billingham’s mother Liz at her flat and Billingham’s younger brother Jason returned to the household, having been in social care. The family portraits, now taken in the new environment of Liz's flat (complete with a menagerie of animals, decorative furnishings and wallpaper), continued to provide an intimate and brutally honest portrait of family life, featuring Liz and Jason as well as Ray (for example see Images 2 and 3). The book features photos of cats, dogs and a pet rat taken in the flat, together with a single (urban) landscape and three appallingly bad wildlife photos, the latter representing the only photographs in the book that were taken outdoors as Billingham sought to escape family chaos for a short time.

Image 2. Jason and Ray (Richard Billingham: "Ray's a Laugh")

Image 3. Liz (Richard Billingham: "Ray's a Laugh")

Photojournalism often highlights the lives of people in socially deprived areas of society, for example those living on the streets, migrants, prostitutes, drug users and abusers. However surely nobody had, prior to the publication of this book, produced anything so brutally honest about their close family. Billingham’s images take us into his home. They make us feel emotions that must have manifested themselves in his mind and they make us shudder and think “there but for the grace of god….” And yet, for all the sadness, for all his father’s drunken antics that are captured on film (see, for example, Image 4) and all the hopelessness of his parents’ situation there is still a feeling of a family bond, even of love between family members.

Image 4. Ray (Richard Billingham: "Ray's a Laugh")

Why did Billingham take these intimate photos in the first place? As Charlotte Cotton describes in her essay describing the evolution of “Ray’s a Laugh” in the ‘Errata’ book, they were never intended for publication. Billingham describes taking his first photographs of Ray at home (Ray was living with Richard after Liz had left) as a means of documenting what was happening to them, physically (for Ray), as well as psychologically and emotionally for both. He has commented that he felt like a wildlife photographer, documenting the behaviour of a particular species (his family). He took a shopping bag full of these family prints to the University of Sunderland, where some were used to produce sketches and paintings of his father. Here the photographs were seen by a tutor (Julian Germain) who alerted his friend Michael Collins (then picture editor of The Daily Telegraph) regarding their potential. Thus a process started, which ended with the publication of “Ray’s a Laugh”.

How can I relate “Ray’s a Laugh” to my own project work? The family photos that I took were, unlike Billingham’s images, never candid. All the archival photos that I have used were relatively formal and often posed. Nevertheless the deterioration in my mother’s health and mental state can clearly be traced photographically, from the ‘early years’ following my father’s death to the photos taken at Christmas 2006, a month before she died. The fact that I am confident enough to use these latter images, which I still find hard to look at, in a photo book that will be viewed by people who are not a part of my family stems from the confidence gained by studying the candid nature of Billingham’s images. “Ray’s a Laugh” is an important stepping stone in the photographic journey from Modernist formalism to Post-Modernist realism.

Exhibition Review. "The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection" (Tate Modern, London)

(Visited on 3 December 2016 and 1 April 2017)

Despite its reputation as a ‘trailblazer’ for the arts, the Tate Modern only started collecting photographic art seriously in 2009 and its collection is naturally rather limited in scope. Sir Elton John has, on the other hand, been a serious collector of photographic prints since the early 1990s and has built up an unrivalled collection of modernist photographic art prints dating from the 1920s to the 1950s. Not only does he have an eye for the very best of modernist photo prints but he has the financial clout to obtain these works of art when they appear on the market. This is a very fine collection indeed and I really enjoyed wandering round the galleries, marvelling at what was, of its time, the very highest quality cutting edge photographic art.

The list of featured photographers reads like a “Who’s Who” of modernist photography - André Kertész, Man Ray, Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Edward Steichen, László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Rodchenko and Dorothea Lange to name but a few. Lange’s best known work, “Migrant Mother” (Image 1), looks awesome when viewed close up, whilst Rodchenko’s classic “Shukhov Tower” (Image 2) is one of several prints that feature photographs looking up from below or down from above.

Image 1. Dorothea Lange: "Migrant Mother" (1936)

Image 2. Alexander Rodchenko: "Shukhov Tower" (1927)

Irving Penn’s 1948 portraits of celebrities (Dali, Duke Ellington, Noel Coward) posed between two angled walls are early examples of non-conformist portrait photography. Man Ray’s famous portraits of his fellow Surrealists are also here – indeed, a good proportion of the collection features portraits of one type or another.

Did the exhibition hold any specific value for my current project work? Herbert Bayer’s “Humanly Impossible (Self-Portrait)” (Image 3) provided me with some inspiration regarding the use of mirrors in composition and reminded me that even in 1932, when this work was produced, photographers were experimenting in the darkroom with image manipulation.

Image 3. Herbert Bayer: "Humanly Impossible (Self-portrait)" (1932)

Frederick Sommer’s double exposure of fellow Surrealist Max Ernst (1946) represents an early example of the deliberate double exposure, a motif that I use often in my current project work whilst, in addition to Irving Penn’s work (see above), there are many examples of creatively produced ‘non-conformist’ portraits, of which Stieglitz’s portrait of Georgia O’Keefe is a classic example. Man Ray’s portrait of Max Ernst, in which Ernst appears to be placed behind a cracked glass window, represents another motif that I have used in my recent studies, although I had already produced the image before I visited this exhibition – great minds think alike!

Overall, however, this is an exhibition to ignite the imagination and creativity of any photographer with a serious interest in modernist art. To see so many excellent quality prints produced by the great photographers of the modernist era is inspirational. One final point: Sir Elton says that he has never bought a work for profit. Nevertheless, with the massive increase in interest in photographic art in recent years his collection must represent an excellent investment. If only The Tate had had the foresight to start a photographic collection 30 years ago…..

Major Project Influences (17): Surrealist Photography

For many years I have enjoyed the art of the Surrealists – in particular the work of Salvador Dali. In the 1930s, when the movement was at its peak, painting, sculpture and prose were the dominant art forms that the Surrealists used to express their individual interpretations of dreams and psychic states. Photography was generally viewed at this time as an objective medium for realism and therefore hardly suitable for artists wishing to express their thoughts in an abstract or ‘dreamlike’ form. However, the Surrealists’ love of experimentation and invention not only overcame this potential hurdle but led to the discovery and development of new photographic techniques. By the time the Surrealist movement faded as war broke out in Europe some of its finest and most memorable works had been produced in photographic form.

Whilst the contribution of Man Ray to photographic art (photograms, solarisation etc.) is generally considered to have been of the greatest importance, my own work for this project has been influenced more by the montages and double exposures that were (painstakingly, in the darkroom) produced by Surrealist photographers, many of whom remained largely unknown and/or unheralded. A number of these works were included in ‘The Radical Eye’ exhibition at Tate Modern in 2016-17 (see elsewhere for a  Review). I will mention here just a small number of examples of Surrealist work to give a flavour of how they were not just ahead of the times but how they also influenced my current project work.

Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) came from the Bauhaus school of photographers but produced several imaginative, hallucinatory photomontages that were absolutely typical of the output of the Surrealists. “Lonely Metropolitan” (Image 1) is perhaps his best known work – the use of hands and the overlay motif can be found in my current project work. Bayer loved to experiment in the darkroom in order to produce apparently impossible photographic effects: a typical example of this can be seen in my review of “The Radical Eye” exhibition.

Image 1. Herbert Bayer: "Lonely Metropolitan" (1932)

Erotic subjects were commonplace in the work of the Surrealists and Heinz Hajek-Halke’s montage, “Erotica – Close Up” (Image 2), is a typical example. Once again, the overlaying of one photograph over selected parts of another photograph has been liberally used in my current project work.

Image 2. Heinz Hajek-Halke: "Erotica - Close Up" (1930)

Double exposures were also liberally used by the Surrealists. An interesting example is the photograph of Max Ernst, one of the driving forces in the Surrealist movement, by the Surrealist photographer Frederick Sommer (Image 3). Ernst was himself a prolific polymath, who produced many photo-collages in his lifetime. The use of digital double and multiple exposures has formed a major part of my repertoire in the current project.

Image 3. Frederick Sommer: "Max Ernst" (1946)

Of course photography does not always have to resort to trickery and darkroom techniques in order to influence my work. Lee Miller (1907-78) was best known as Man Ray’s assistant and muse, but was an extremely accomplished photographer in her own right (see my post reviewing the major retrospective exhibition of her work at the Imperial War Museum).  Her photograph “Portrait of Space” (Image 4), with the camera apparently looking out onto a barren land through torn fabric, provided me with ideas for a couple of my own images. It is sad and ironic that, like my mother, Miller struggled with clinical depression in her later years.

Image 4. Lee Miller: "Portrait of Space" (1937)

Whilst I have cited specific examples of Surrealists’ work that has influenced me in this post their use of experimentation, abstract ideas and novel concepts has also provided me with inspiration for my current project, as well as for past projects. It is reasonable to assume that my future work will also be influenced by Surrealism.