Montage: Activity 4

Activity 4

• Find two examples of photomontages that are either from a commercial source or from a fine art background. Discuss in what context they have been produced and what techniques they share with political photomontages.
• What messages, if any, are communicated through these photomontages and how effective do you think they are? Consider different ways that each image could have been tackled by the artist and come up with an idea for ‘another in the series’.

My Response

Dream Big - Connor Lesley

The image above is a photomontage created from 4 pictures. One of the ball court, one of the shoes, one of the little girl about to high five her friend, and one of Kobe Bryant about to dunk the ball. The image conveys the message to "Dream Big", and the use of images provides a huge assistance to that message, as it depicts a little girl attempting to block a dunk from professional basketball player Kobe Bryant; if that's not an example of dreaming big I don't know what is. However, the placement of the shoes in the foreground makes the image seem like an advertisement for Kobe's Nike brand shoes. Commercial photomontages such as this are fairly similar to political photomontages because they manipulate an image (or several images) to produce a different message than the original image provided, and of course, these messages are usually up for interpretation.

Just A Touch - Agence Alfred

The image comes from a fine art background, and is composed of 2 images. The first image of a hand holding a paintbrush and the second of the street and buildings. Personally, I don't see a very noticeable message in this picture other than "It's amazing what one stroke of a brush can lead to" or something like that. If I was to offer any advice on how to approach the image differently, I'd recommend erasing some of the background to make it seem like the hand still has more work to do. As for another image to accompany this one in a series, I'd picture this one as the end of the series while the one I recommended would come before it.