Photomontage Before Photoshop©
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| Press Release: June
2008 Photography was still a new invention by the time photographers first devised the technique of composing images that were themselves technical feats. Thinking outside the box, these pioneers took photography to a whole new level using the medium to create complex images comprised of any number of individual pictures proving that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Disderi, a Parisian photographer credited with inventing the carte de visite photograph, (a calling card size photograph, 2 ½”x4”, popular throughout much of the latter half of the 19th century), also conceived the aptly titled “mosaique”, a single photograph consisting of numerous different images. Typical subjects were celebrated figures of the day. The example we exhibit is an 1860’s image of the Emperor Napoleon and members of the royal family, an artfully composed montage that juxtaposes 38 separate portraits on a single carte de visite. In addition to glorifying the celebrated, religion and spirituality were also frequent subjects. A rare circa 1860 albumen photograph depicts a young woman in the guise of an angel floating in heaven; the photographer, a relatively unknown Englishman, is credited as “C. Tune”. The printed caption beneath the picture is a quote from the bible and could just as well be interpreted as a reference to photography: “With Thee is the Fountain of life, in thy light shall we see light”. Another 19th century English practitioner, Frederick Hudson, used darkroom trickery to create photographs that he purported to contain materializations of the spirit world. For the cost of a portrait sitting he could produce an image in which the sitters ‘dearly departed’ could be seen hovering as ‘extras’ seamlessly incorporated into the background. Political satire is one of the more common uses for photomontage, especially in Europe in the years between World War I and World War II. An unidentified American photographer made an image in 1922, for the San Francisco Examiner. Inspired by the “Teapot Dome” scandal, this clever artist re-imagines the White House Dome as a teapot, a symbol of how the administration of President Warren G. Harding had been compromised by the corruption that became fodder for the daily press. Beginning in the 1920s, as photography replaced illustration in mass-media advertising and publicity, montage work proliferated. Imaginative and dramatic photo-illustrations were the modern way to persuade consumers of the necessity of any number of products. A classic example is an Underwood Studio photograph of a man whose head is surrounded with little men swinging hammers, no doubt a fantasy created to sell a headache remedy. Computer software has changed the playing field and with the advent
of Photoshop©, manipulation of photographic images has become
not only commonplace, but a skill that has made the field of graphic
design accessible to the masses.
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