David Hockney

You’ve probably heard that David Hockney died a couple of weeks ago. He was an English-born artist who inspired me at a particular time in my life. I’d always liked his paintings, and remember visiting the Tate Gallery in London one time when I was traveling and enjoying an exhibition of his work. I still have some of the postcards of his art that I bought that time.

I’m no artist, but one of the many paths of his artistic endeavors really appealed to me — his experiments using photos, many photos of the one subject, photos taken from different angles and pasted together, giving a more than three dimensional view of the subject. More than three dimensional because they effectively added in time and even the changes in mood and light.

I bought this book about them containing many examples of his photo collages and later I saw a video about him actually making them. It was fascinating — and I was inspired.

This isn’t the film I saw, but it’s a video about him explaining his process.

Or if you”re on Instagram and would like a much shorter post, watch this one:

Since I was traveling, and of course I take lots of photos when I’m traveling, I started playing with some of the same techniques. However, being a back-packer at the time, and therefore being very careful with my money, I couldn’t afford to take (and have developed—yes it was a long time ago) nearly as many photos as he did, but it was fun, nevertheless.

In a number of his collages you can also see one or both of his feet, a device that connects him to the subject — you can see them in this collage of his mother at Bolton Abbey. So of course many of my photos also included my feet — not all because sometimes it wasn’t appropriate. <g> But it was fun and I really liked the effect. You can see my foot in this collage I made of a scene in beautiful Connemara, Ireland, where I walked out into the countryside and took a few photos.

The difficulty with the technique, however is that these photo collages take up a fair bit of space if you use enough photos to make them really interesting. Once I got home, and was earning money again, I played more with the technique.

I mounted my photo collages on A2 sheets (42 × 59.4 cm or 16.5 × 23.4 inches). Some were of places I visited, some recorded gatherings of friends, quite a few were about books I was writing, or planning to write and one was of one of a theatrical event a couple of friends performed on Southbank, on the banks of the Yarra River in the CBD of Melbourne. I really liked that one, but I gave it to one of the participants.

Here are some of the story collages I made while/before writing the books. Making them helped me clarify some things about my characters and sparked ideas about the stories. (Can you guess which books these collages were about?

I had a number of them displayed in my old house, but they were getting old and faded and a bit tatty, so I threw them out when I moved. I regret that now, but . . . “Too late!” she cried. But at least I took a few photos of them — not all, I’m sorry to say. Or if I did, they’re still on my old, dead i-phone.

What about you — do you like these photo collages, or do you find them a bit messy and confusing? Have you ever tried to make one, or has this post sparked your interest?