David Hockney
My image
The first photograph is the work of the UK artist David Hockney, Hockney's style of photography is referred as on his website as a "photo collage" however this style is more commonly known as a photo joiner. My image is a photo joiner and has been largely inspired by Hockney's work.
Similarities between the work of myself and Hockney include the principal and aesthetic appearance of the images, this is displayed through the joiner effect present in both images. The two images are not completely the same however as the technical process varies between images. In Hockney's image the photos were taken outside and stuck together physically; in my image however the photo's which join together to make the main piece were shot in the studio with regular lighting and controlled conditions also my images were compiled using editing software.
The editing software that I used was Photoshop CC 2014, I feel that the use of photoshop opposed to a more natural method of joining such as glueing the image's down as Hockney does has created a far smoother and cleaner appearance for my image. I believe however that the more weathered appearance of Hockey's work gives it a far more personal appearance which may make it more appealing to viewers.
The camera angles and final image aesthetic also vary between my image and Hockney's. My image focuses on the entire body of the seated subject whereas Hockney's work focuses on the subjects head, Hockney also uses a wider variety of camera angles than are seen in my work as I opted to shoot all of the images head on. Aesthetic is also similar in the way in which both myself and Hockney have chosen to back our images with a background of single colour (Hockney using black and myself using white) in order to tie the image composition together effectively.
I feel that my image differs from Hockney's in the fact that it has a more surreal and sinister appearance. Examples of my surreal imagery can be found in the employment of the gas mask which covers half of the subjects face. This appearance was created by photographing the subjects head wearing the gas mask and not wearing the mask and then joining the two halves of the subjects face together. The use of the gas mask carries connotations of death war time which may unsettle the viewer. I feel that through choosing to incorporate aspects of surrealism (an area of photography which interests me) I was able to make the joiner style my own and break away slightly from external influences.
I feel that if I were to more closely recreate Hockney's work in the future that exploring the possibility of incorporating physical composition techniques may be something which I should explore further. If I were to revisit this project I would also like to further experiment with surrealism and perhaps look into the work of Hannah Hock.
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