Photomontage
To create a photomontage, an artist takes many photographs and pieces them together to create a single image. Using this technique, an artist can capture a subject over time or play with perspective and space.
This lesson begins with questions of perception: can a single photograph of a home really describe the way the artist knows it? Might a photomontage that captures both its sides, previously hidden from any one perspective, show more of what the artist knows about it? How about an image of a school or busy workplace? How might a photomontage describe the space differently than a single photograph could?
Students will consider the work of several artists: Oliver Herring, a contemporary artist whose photomontages evolve into sculpture; David Hockney, an artist who pioneered the use of photomontage in the 1970s and 80s; and various Cubist painters who considered subjects from multiple viewpoints at once in the early decades of the twentieth century. Each student will experiment, rendering a subject not just in the way his camera sees it in a single exposure, but in the way that expresses how the student knows or experiences the subject in time and space.