Unit 8 Activity 1

Henry Peach Robinson's "Fading Away"

Photomontages began to be made in the late 1800's. Photographers would expose certain sections of negatives to make a single image. Many people criticized this process, most likely because it could be considered "fake" photography. Skill may not be needed to get true art if you cheat and make it up. It isn't real. Photography was about the real world, and these innovators of photomontages made photography fake. People truly couldn't believe what they saw. In my opinion, however, I think it's very unique and creative. You can use your imagination and create things unseen and create emotions that simply couldn't appear if it was a "real" photograph. In today's age, photomontages are very popular. Partially because I feel there's been a surge of new creativity, but most likely because of technology. Before Photoshop, creating a photomontage was painstaking and took hours, possibly days. Now you can do everything on a computer easily, and it often looks better too. Pictures are better quality, colors are richer, and the photos merge together more smoothly. I think there's a correlation between the technology and creativity surge as well; it may not be that the imagination is new, but all of the creative photomontages just could not be done before. With technology, we can really express ourselves much better.