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David Hockney

David Hockney is one of those artist who I hear a lot about in class. His impressive joiner photography is a very clever and unique way of producing an abstract image. I have tried this technique's quite a lot recently with success. I don't feel like I've done enough research behind this technique and his work in general. So I've decided to focus on him for one of my 5 photographers that we are to focus on for our photography unit.
Something as simply as this work space has been given a lot more dimension
which creates more information for the viewer to absorb 



Ive read that his famous joiner photographs occurred accidentally. He didn't like the wide angle lenses as they seem to have a distortion he thought, which must've pushed him to take these individually images and join them together. This accidental method occurred when he was doing a painting of a living room and he decided to take polaroid photos of the room and glue them together. Possibly to aid him with the composition of the painting. He looked at the finished image that he had created and he found out that it created a journey, a narrative of the room. I get the same feeling when I look at the photos that I have taken, they tell a story of where I've been with a lot more information than a standard photograph.


The main obstacle he claimed to have overcome was the limited perspective he had from a single shot. He states that all photographers share the same flaw which he sums up as a lack of time. I do feel like this is certainly an obstacle that he has overcome by pursuing this idea.

These grid ones have a more Cubist feel about them in the way they are presented. They have a cleaner more organised look about them but I prefer the more collage and unpredictable looking ones. I feel like the grid ones have limitations which I see as a disadvantage to the other style which has more character. I do still like this way of doing it, so I might give it a go. It looks like the white border might be the edge of the Polaroid printouts, so I'm not sure how i'll replicate the look as I don't have any instant cameras


My Attempts at David Hockney's Joiner Photography


For this first image I felt like doing a vertical panning photography to try and capture the height and scale of the trees. I felt like including my feet would help me achieve the desired effect I was after. I didn't use as many photos as I thought I would, mostly because they didn't add anything to the final image, it only confused the image I felt. Another element I thought about was colour, I thought about changing it to black and white but I felt like the contrasting colours were more effective from the grass and lake. It broke it up more and made for more interesting imagery

For this next one I wanted to think in a more landscape sense and I also wanted to get a sense of distance.. The person in the photograph helps with giving the sense of scale and distance. I also decided on black and white for this one because it gave it more of a dynamic feel and depth. I had Ansel Adam's landscapes work in mind when I was doing this one, he's a photographer who Ive briefly wrote about in a previous post. Capturing the foreground is very effective in delivering the feel of distance to the viewer, which is something Ive been keeping in mind for other photographs Ive taken.

This last one I did came out quite well I feel. I was going for a more abstract feel where some sections don't match up as well as previous attempts. I like the distortion in my body and landscape which wasn't what I intended but I'm glad that it has turned out this way. I really enjoy doing these photographs mainly because of the playfulness of them. I feel like theres no rules for when I'm putting them together and whatever I say goes, if the landscape is out of alignment or the image somehow shows that I have 4 arms, then thats totally fine and it gives the entire image more character and almost a surreal feel





Sources
https://www.practicalphotography.com/learning-zone/landscapes/articles/2016/6/27/piece-together-a-david-hockney-collage

https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/photography/david-hockney-s-joiners/

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