collage

Instagram and Anxiety of the Photographer – Part III

“we still look relentlessly to technology for solutions to the very problems technology seems to cause [...]” – David Foster Wallace

Over the past few years, iPhoneography has created a new form of photography that has and will continue to re-structure how we interface with technology, gather and generate data, and how we create narratives. iPhone (and similar smartphone) users employ mobile photography to disseminate mass amounts of information, to subvert cultural institutions, and for political rallying. These behaviors parallel the same strategies of the radical Avant-Garde art movements of the 20th century.

In the third and final article in this series I will expose the hidden contradiction that exist between mobile photography and the Avant-Garde described in Wallace’s quote through the use of Collage.

Image of Earth Made Up of 1400 Photos of People Waving at the Cassini Spacecraft

On July 19th, the Cassini spacecraft that has been hovering around Saturn -- and sending back some stunning images we might add -- turned around to take a picture of its home planet as part of a larger mosaic of the Saturn system.

In honor of this occasion, NASA asked people to send in photos of them waving at Cassini as it took their picture from roughly 808 Million miles away (give or take). Over 1,400 photos were submitted, and have been combined into a beautiful collage of Earth.

Photographer Peter Beard on His Love of Nature and the Magic of Photography

Over the course of his wild and fascinating life, 75-year-old Peter Beard has made a name for himself as photographer, artist, author and playboy alike. Still, his legacy lies in the incredible photographs he has brought back from countless trips to Africa.

Whatever his fans and detractors call him, his dedication to the natural world is unquestionable, and in the short film above, he shares a few of his thoughts on nature, photography and how he has used one to tell stories about the other.

Beautiful Photo Collage of the Sun Shows Different Wavelengths of Light

Our sun can look very different in photographs depending on the wavelength of light you're trying to capture. Some photographs show the sun as a glowing white ball, while others capture hotter areas in a cold blue color. NASA recently took a collection of sun photos shot at different wavelengths and combined them into the beautiful photo collage seen above (here's a higher-res version).

Handmade Diorama Maps Created Using Thousands of Printed Photos

What you see above is a "map" of Paris created by collaging thousands of photographs shot in the city. It's just one of the amazing pieces in Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino's Diorama Map project. The series contains maps of many of the world's most famous cities, and all of them are photographed and collaged by hand.

Photo Mosaics That Show Just How Much Internet Reproductions “Lie”

Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg are scientists by trade and artists at heart. They work as the leads of a Google research group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and are constantly on the lookout for interesting (and artistic) ways to visualize data.

Back in 2011, they came up with an interesting project titled "The Art Of Reproduction," which shows how digital reproductions of photographs (and paintings) found on the Internet are far from "truthful."

Massive Photo Collage Creatively Depicts Every Street Sign in Manhattan

Photographer Jacob Kedzierski first came up with the idea to create a street sign collage eight years ago while riding a bike around the streets of his hometown of North Tonawanda, NY. After completing that project and moving to New York City, the idea for a Manhattan version crossed his mind several times, but he was never ready to commit to the amount of work it would take to actually get it done.

That was until he offhandedly mentioned that he was "working on" a Manhattan version at a local print shop. The owners had liked his North Tonawanda collage and when he mentioned Manhattan they offered him a spot in the front gallery area for when the project was done. He finally had his motivation.

Amazing Surreal Photomontages Created Without the Use of Photoshop

Upon first glance, artist Thomas Barbèy's surreal photomontages may seem rather amateur when compared with all the highly-polished photomanipulations that are floating around on the Internet. However, one simple fact will make you see the pieces in an entirely different light: Barbèy shoots film and uses in-camera and darkroom techniques to create the works!

That's right: he eschews Photoshop and digital trickery in favor of analog processes.

Specimen Box Picture Collages Created with Photo Fragments

We've seen many a photo collage in our day, but New York artist Michael Mapes' Specimen Boxes are an entirely different creature. To create these unique photo compartments, he dissects various photos of his subjects into many corresponding bits and then mounts those bits on or in different materials -- much like what you see in insect collection boxes. Sometimes it's vials, sometimes it's push pins, and sometimes it's gel caps, but it always turns out looking really interesting.

Artificial Beauty Through Sparse Collaged Landscapes

Photographer Lauren Marsolier’s Transition series consists of minimalist landscape photographs of desolate locations. The various places don't actually exist -- Marsolier creates them by combining photographs captured in different places at different times.

Planets Created by Combining Photos Captured From High Locations

Creating tiny planets by projecting panoramic photographs onto a sphere is something you've probably seen before, but Dutch photographer Wouter van Buuren creates his planets a bit differently. rather than shoot panoramas from the ground, van Buuren climbs to the top of towers, cranes, skyscrapers, and bridges and points his camera in every direction below. He then takes the resulting photographs and arranges them into compact worlds.

Portraits Blended with Photos of Nature

New York-based artist Matt Wisniewski creates digital collages by blending fashion and nature photographs together into surreal images. The images remind us of photographer Dan Mountford's double exposure photographs, except Wisniewski uses digital manipulation rather than in-camera trickery.

Living Pictures: Photo Collages of Windows Spotted Around the World

Photographer Anne-Laure House photographs illuminated windows at night in cities around the world, and arranges them into beautiful collages. She writes,

At nightfall, the windows of the flats that are lit up attract more attention than the façade of the buildings that frame them. Lit interiors become real tableaux vivants. The interior takes precedence over the exterior, and we can glimpse moments of people’s intimate lives. I am not actually interested in their intimacy as such, but rather by the space itself – the warmth of a particular light, the twinkling of a Christmas garland or the shimmering glow of a television, the corner of a painting. All these details stir my imagination and inspire my work. When I gaze at these windows, I like to tell myself a story. I capture these intimate moments and build my own structures."

The collage above shows windows seen in New York City.