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Inspiration Rediscovered
Today I had some free time, between naps, and I remembered there was a photographer that had inspired me when I was younger. Now seeing as I have this swiss cheese memory, it took a while for me to find him on the web. Now seeing that he was around a while when I was in high school, it was distinctly possible that he may not even be on the web, or even his books listed on Amazon. So I searched.
He was an artist of the darkroom before there was even such a thing as PhotoShop or Photopaint of the digital era. He was doing miltiprints and precision photographic masking before it became as commonplace as it is today. He combined unrelated subjects in an unique and intriguing way creating symbolism and meaning from nothing. Today we see this and we take it for granted, but he was doing it 40 years before it was in style.
It took me about a half hour to remember his name by doing some very detailed searches and finding that he was mentioned in an article about “Photographic Forgeries” called “The Camera Does Lie”. His name is (yes, he is still alive and living in Florida) Jerry Uelsmann and his work is unique to the world of photography.
The last entry I wrote uses one of his images as an example of exhaustion, and you have to remember that there is NO DIGITAL MANIPULATION used for the effect, it is all done in the darkroom. The book that started it was “Photo Synthesis”, a rare first edition that has been reprinted but not completely. Even with all that is on the web, I could not find the one that was my favorite, it may be long gone, who knows.
Here are a few other examples of his work that appeal to me:
All of these were NOT done on the computer. Incredible.
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- JB
