Photomontage and Photocollage

I was interested in the reading because the past few times I’ve spent in the darkroom, I’ve experimented a little with (from what I understood in the reading) photomontage, and I just think that both collage and montage are great ways to make images since one is literally breaking the barrier of the camera and creating images that weren’t necessarily or could not have been produced with the camera by itself. I was not super interested in the author’s detailed explanation of the differences between the two techniques, since ultimately, he just gives a conclusive answer as to what the difference between the two were, but I did appreciate the short section at the end where he talks about the similarities between the two techniques and generally, what type of message/purpose both techniques are attempting to achieve. It was also interesting to look up the artists the author spoke about and to see what their works looked like.

I was particularly interested in Barbara Kruger. I’m pretty familiar with her because the skateboarding/streetwear brand ‘Supreme’ ripped off her style for their now very famous logo, but after the reading, I was prompted to look more deeply into her actual work. I really like the monochrome paste-ups that she made (before she started using digital techniques to plot out her work) because of the simplicity of the collage itself. Rather than being many different photographs together (like something by Hannah Hoch), it’s one or at most two actual images overlaid with some text that contextualizes the image beneath it or makes you see it in a different light.