Putting the edge on

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Wall of pictures

Last week at ICP we ran with Collage/Montage again. This is one of my favorite ways to teach. Basically it's like finger painting. We throw ideas on the table from many different directions -- that is, pictures from the history of collage and montage, pictures from today, Photoshop techniques, darkroom techniques -- and then cajole folks into letting their intuition loose.

Headless Barbie on the scanner.


By the end of the week we were zooming back and forth between the computer lab, the black & white darkroom, and the color darkroom. People were scanning and printing and rescanning. Stuff was getting cut up, recombined, and then re-cut up.

CollageMontage
An inkjet negative getting ready for the darkroom.

The organizing question at the root of this workshop is about the role of the edge of the picture within the picture itself. When you shoot a photography, what do you include inside the frame? What do you exclude? Normally that boundary is invisible (we don't think about the stuff we don't see). But not always -- sometimes the edge of the picture (the non-picture) is the point of the process. Why? What is gained?

CollageMontage
The wall at the end of the week

At the end of the week intensive, after the whirlwind of history, ideas, techniques, and just good old fashioned digging into the process, Jean said she felt ready to begin the workshop! And we all wished there had been more time to play. Too brief!

Thanks to Jean, Leon, Ana, Cat, Katie, Andrea and Katherine. I had a great time playing these thoughts and materials though with you. Keep going, keep messing with the edge.

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