The Reality of Deception: Composite Photography
Updated Sep 5th
This week’s lecture was incredibly inspiring. The collodion process seems to have been such a revolutionary step in the world of photography because of how enabling and accessible it made the medium to the public. Seeing just how inspired all of these individuals were to carry an entire darkroom along with their travels sourced such appreciation and second-hand inspiration from me. As a medium-format photographer, this lecture really made me want to jump into the world of large-format photography and specifically experiment with the collodion process.
As with any film process, I find the incredibly slow and intentional practice so meditative and present, however, I’ve never used a process or film this slow. ISO 3 is such a slow format but I think it works with the jump in size. In my own practice, I use different formats as follows: for 35mm I prefer very fast film- ISO 1600-3200 is my favorite range as I think the look of the fast film fits the format so well, whereas my medium-format process typically utilizes film-speeds from 50-400. Large format (with the exception of portraiture) makes sense as to capture as much information as possible. I think with today’s incredibly powerful lighting and speed-light capabilities it may be possible to capture a collodion portrait in a fraction of a second with super high wattage lights, although it may come at the cost of blinding the sitter.
Image of the Week: Thomas Kellner
33#39, England, Lacock Abbey, 2002, BW-Print, 26, 8x17, 6cm/10,5”x6,9”, 30+3
Thoams Kellner
The interesting aspect of photography is its root in reality. The medium began as such an incredibly realistic depiction of life that it was considered reality. How photographers twisted and morphed this ‘reality’ into non-reality, I believe, was the start of the photographer as an artist. From panoramas that extend past the human eye’s field of view to the addition of artifacts and presences in photographs, the medium began to manipulate how we perceive reality, and what is possible in a photograph. This week I will explore the non-reality of the photographic medium.
Composite photography and combination prints involve the use of two or more negatives to make a single print. I believe this idea spans from the use of negatives side by side or stacked on top of one another.
[The Great Wave, Sète]1857
Gustave Le Grey was one of the first to discover the potential of composite images. La Grey understood the inability for emulsions at that time to capture different wavelengths of light equally. This issue produces blown-out skies with correctly exposed foregrounds or correctly exposed skies with no detail in the landscape. Le Grey began to capture two different correct exposure, one of the sky and another of the foreground, and composite them into one image with the correct exposure for the different elements. This solution provided him with international recognition for his innovative techniques in photography and printing.
William Notman. Caribou Hunting, The Chance Shot. Montreal (1866)
Although Notman was apparently forgotten and overlooked in his time, he was considered one of the first artists as a photographer. He actually considered and branded himself as a “photographic artist”. More on Notman later…
William H. Mumler, “Lincoln Spirit Photo”, (early 1870s )
What an incredibly creepy image! The composite use of multiple exposures to show the presence of faint spirits was incredibly attractive to Mumler, and the above photo is perhaps his most famous print- Mary Todd Lincoln with her late husband (Abraham Lincoln) standing eerily behind. Apparently, some found these images comforting in their time, as a sort of remembrance.
“Man Juggling His Own Head”, Saint Thomas D’Aquin, ca. 1880
This image apparently stands as a meme of the 1800s. The creation of a gag was a type of satirical and ironic use of the medium. I see it as an incredibly progressive anti-art (or anti-science) work that stabs the idea of photography as a science right in the heart. Such a creative idea that really must’ve challenged the perception of reality, photography, and the world of art and science.
William Notman & Son, The Bounce, Montreal Snowshoe Club, 1886
Composite, silver salts on glass, gelatin dry plate process
25 x 20 cm
McCord Museum
Notman, supposedly among the grandfathers of compositing, composed this image of many separate negatives to generate the overall composited negative. This is such an incredible process because it produces a new negative that can be used to make numerous prints in reproduction. Notman has such an incredible vision to plan out these images and then work to generate individual portraits to compose the cumulative image.
Although not necessarily a photographic technique, Notman utilized opaque and transparent paints to produce different effects on his images. In The Bounce, Notman used paint to give the effect of snow falling, zinc plates to produce ice effects, and lambswool for fluffy snow. In the below image, Skating Carnival, Notman stitched around 300 negatives into one composited image then painted the work to produce a painterly scene of an urban Christmas wonderland.
William Notman, Skating Carnival, Victoria Rink, Montreal, 1870
Painted composite, silver salts, oil on canvas, albumen process, 137 x 176 cm
McCord Museum
The composite photo eventually grew to a controversial stage becuase of the new understanding that a photograph could represent a false reality.
“This photograph of the tornado funnel at Waynoka, Oklahoma by G.F. Green was the first to have been published in a newspaper, the Alva Pioneer, a few days after it occurred. The way the funnel and the funnel join in this photograph does not look very natural. This photo was probably touched up or combined with another photograph that had a more interesting cloud base. Early photographs were frequently altered to make them more saleable commercially. Note the similarity with the fraudulent duplicate in Figure 22; April 27, 1899 at Kirksville, MO. […] Now, the story was getting even stranger. I flipped ahead four pages and found this: […] It was the same bizarre funnel and cloud base! This shot was even stranger. In addition to all the weird meteorological aspects of the photo, the trees seemed unaffected by the tornado, but if you've ever seen a tornado, you know that's not the case (each of those "branches" is an entire tree being uprooted)”
- Alex Cooke, 2015
The Vision (Orpheus Scene), F Holland Day, 1907
Day utilized multiple exposures in the printing process to really challenge the concept of photography as reality. His grasping of the surreal rooted in reality twisted the consumption of photography in that viewers were forced to analyze and understand his works as one would a painting. The inability to immediately recognize and peg a photographic scene as something perceivable by the eye began to shift the medium out of hard science.
Takashi Fukukawa- The revival of the composite in a digital age
Sources:
https://www.loc.gov/collections/panoramic-photographs/articles-and-essays/a-brief-history-of-panoramic-photography/
https://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/20483/1/it-turns-out-photoshop-was-a-thing-even-in-the-19th-century
https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/composite-photography-in-victorian-times/
https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/william-notman/style-and-technique/
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/261941
https://fstoppers.com/composite/story-one-earliest-composite-controversies-95745
