Photo Montage
Photo montage is one of those arts that can be considered accessible to anyone who tries. A lot of the artists talked about in the readings and slideshow stood out to me, however the big two were Becha and Vasilis Marmatakis. Both artists create rather simply montages but they seem to speak loudly. For this I think they’re very notable artists.
Becha
Becha uses bright colors, her own drawings, and various shapes and combines them with flower imagery and other aspects of the beauty of life in order to create her montages. She’s known for her Gong Muse Montage series that was a project for a communications company. She was able to create incredibly vibrant and new feeling images from old paintings and newspaper cuttings. This artist has made me look at photo montage differently because a lot of the montages I’ve seen have been very crowded and layered, while Becha’s are surreal and pieces together to make a bright and clear image. I find that aspect of her montages to be very appealing to me.
Vasilis Marmatakis
Marmatakis is known mostly for his montage movie posters. He creates almost disturbing pieces using repetition, clustering, scale, and layering. In one of his montage posters, he shows a women who is wearing makeup, except her eyeshadow is two smaller men laying on her eyelids tinted blue and purple, and her lipstick is another man laying across her lips tinted red. Though his most disturbing piece to me would probably being “Begonia” This shows a man with his head tilted up and his mouth open. A thick red liquid is pouring from the top of the poster and meeting his face halfway down. I’m not completely sure what is so unsettling about this, I think it might be what looks like fear or regret in the man’s eyes. What interests me most about this artists work is the simplicity and darkness in it. He creates a lot of montages that is just a few photos but they’re dark, repeated, and somewhat disturbing. I’d like to expand on those ideas going into my montage.
