When one image may be not enough - reasons for diptychs, collages in photography

<p>We usually try to put everything we see, or want to communicate, into a single image.<br>

Contrary to the single image or statement, a lot of art, particularly that of the recent century, employs multiple images to visually communicate feelings or other messages. Think also of the incompleteness of a jazz group without a bass or continuo player, or without a saxophone to dialogue with the piano. Think of a great musical drama like Mozart's Magic Flute without it's genius of multiple characters and protagonists, its multiple meanings (truth, a satire on the then current monarchy, love, hate, the Freemasons, and so on). Each has multiple images.<br>

Why are we not photographing using double, triple or multiple photos to set up, to comprise an overall photographic image? Must everything in an image be photographed at the same precise instant? We do occasionally use multiple exposure and we have seen and perhaps used photo essays, comprised of distinct images made over a period of time and related to some theme. But these are detached from each other and anyways are viewed consecutively. Seldom do photographers use the diptych or triptych style, or collage style, of creation and presentation.<br>

Why is that? Are there reasons why you think images made up of multiple elements are contrary to the photographic approach? Are there types of multiple images within an overall picture that you feel should be exploited, and presently aren't?<br>

This summer I did a number of images to celebrate an early explorer-founder of my local city in North America. I wanted to generate a feeling of what it was like for him and his companions when he arrived in this region, using my photography of his writings, his maps, the nature of the land as it imay have been then, (present) indigenous people's shelters, ancient artefacts and boats. I never got to the point of introducing double exposure out of focus images of imagined persons in the photos of presently uninhabited parts of the region, but I did do a few multiple image pictures in which the idea was to convey the situation in 1608 (he came earlier, but this was the city's founding year). The photos were made in different places, but the overall image was meant to convey a single impression. I am not entirely happy with the results, but I am including one of the pictures to indicate the use of 3 photographs in a single picture, to preface this discussion. It refers to the comments of the explorer on the difficult shallow northern passage around an island in the river he travelled (by canoe, his ships had to be moored upstream). The fading, phantomic, local rock art is not of him, but I altered it sightly in PS to try to give that idea.<br>

Your feelings, pro and con, on the use of multiple images in a photo may go far enlighten me and the rest of us on how such photography may or may not be useful. How do you think it is perceived by the public who may be interested in photography?</p>

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<p>Before computers with photoshop I made a whole series of posterizations (that take all day, now it's a click of the button). The small photo off the corner was one of the b/w4x5 sheets of high contrast litho film was of the image that people could identify (framed): the large center image was the multicolored posterization, framed. </p>

<p>This is a poor copy of the triptych (it has the "blues"), but it is only meant as an example of the post question.</p>

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<p>We usually try to put everything we see, or want to communicate, into a single image.</p>

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<p>Who is we? I do almost everything in series. I never expect a single image to be the only thing I have to say, if that were the case, I wouldn't have much to say.</p>

<p>Jeff, how do you relate your single images to each other? Most of us (the assumed "we", based upon what is observed in most portfolios) seem to have themes in our work, and multiple statements of it. But I am referring here to a specific statement, made up of more than one image. I accept that that may not work for you.</p>

<p>Interesting that you raise this topic; it's been a primary interest for me for a long time, first with painting, and also in the past few years with photography as well.</p>

<p>Part of my reason for combining different images into one piece is my belief that the world has been photographed to death, and it's hard for single images to have much impact. Putting them into combinations changes how each is perceived, much the way colors will appear to shift depending on the color next to them. Relationships (visual, emotional, etc.) between the images also emerge. Most of the time I put three photos together; occasionally two. The individual images are shot at different times, places, and with different film formats (always film) and are not cropped.</p>

<p>Viewer reaction can be mixed. Some get it and appreciate the relationships but some get confused by anything that's not a single image. I've had the same thing happen with the paintings, where somebody wanted to buy just one part. It's not the way we've been trained to see, although there certainly is a precedent for it in art, split-screen scenes in movies, and even many image-layered web pages.</p>

<p>Arthur,</p>

<p>There are many artists who use diptychs, triptychs or other series, some almost exclusively, some at times. Examples by <a href="http://imagefiction.blogspot.com/">Ted Byrne</a> are <a href="http://imagefiction.blogspot.com/2008/01/um-unusual.html">here</a> , <a href="http://imagefiction.blogspot.com/2007/11/whos-artist-here.html">here</a> and <a href="http://imagefiction.blogspot.com/2007/11/reality-in-bucket.html">here</a> , all of <a href="http://billgotz.com/">Bill Gotz</a> ' recent work is in the form of triptychs, <a href="http://www.madmediastudios.com/">Julie Nixon</a> has made <a href="http://www.madmediastudios.com/archives/635">lots</a> <a href="http://www.madmediastudios.com/archives/635">of</a> <a href="http://www.madmediastudios.com/archives/489">diptychs</a> , and at least one of them contradicts our western tradition of reading left to right with a <a href="http://www.madmediastudios.com/archives/489">subtle reversal of time</a> .</p>

<p>There's more. Much more, and all these things make sense in a way. Series of images are great in making sense, because they convey much more information than a single image could. My friend Ted Byrne frequently refers people to Scott McCloud's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-Mccloud/dp/006097625X">Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art</a> ", a comic about the sequential art of comics, a great book and extremely instructive not only regarding comics, but all the visual arts, including photography.</p>

<p>My perception is, that people generally accept sequences of images, exactly because we all are extremely familiar with comics. If at all, I'd expect resistance from some photography purists, you know, the same crowd that opposes digital photography, color photography, everything but cropping, cropping, dodging, burning, in other words: everything that makes a photography more than a plain copy of reality.</p>

<p>Personally I don't use that device. This is not because I'm not interested in the story-telling power of it, it's more that I mainly shoot for my <a href="http://blog.andreas-manessinger.info/">daily blog</a> , and blogging daily is a very unique challenge that forces you to change subjects all of the time. It's definitely something I want to explore though some time.</p>

<p>I appreciate those artists' work , but I would argue that the Bill Gotz examples are single images.</p>

<p>I do agree somewhat about the comics bit; I know that format has influenced me. The problem people have is when the images are <b>not</b> sequential (such as my own work), because comics have given them that expectation. A sequence implies a story; or at least a rebus. So while the format seems familiar, it doesn't really help viewers with what I do. </p>

<p>Duane Michaels' pictures are often sequential, and they do tell a story.</p>

<p>Ben Long: "my belief that the world has been photographed to death, and it's hard for single images to have much impact"<br>

Ben, the world is ever evolving, one (or for that matter, many) can never photograph it to death. Additionally, I see many examples of singular images in PN that have great impact, at least to me anyway. I understand what you're saying about the impact of combined images but I would argue that sequential images (in a particular collage) have an equal impact. I admit my knowledge and exposure to diptych type images is limited, and they seem a fascinating (if nothing else) way of documenting or expressing one's voice graphically. It appears as much a form of artistic expression as single images. Like Jeff I don't accept that a single image is all I have to say about certain subject matter (most of the time), while at other times, it is more than enough.</p>

<p><em>"Your feelings, pro and con, on the use of multiple images in a photo may go far enlighten me and the rest of us on how such photography may or may not be useful. How do you think it is perceived by the public who may be interested in photography?"</em><br>

Multiple images, collages, diptychs from my experience are usually used in a commercial photography; when industry wants to present some of their products at public places - shops, restaurants and similar. Then those kind of multiple images are visually very attractive and it suits as a decoration very well. <br>

I personally never did this kind of images, but if I ever come to describe as a photo essay, I'd probably do triptychs and multiple one.</p>

<p>Collages, essays, the 'ptych, are attractive for the photographer who has a didactic purpose, or wants to present a narrative, or who wants a dialogue with the viewer and so introduces language by creating a system of signs in a visual field, or so it seems to me. I find myself close to Kristina's view.</p>

 

<p>Don and Kristina: Commercial uses or didactic messages apart, which have their audience I guess, do you see no other possibilities in the use of collages or multi-image pictures? A lot of 20th (and now 21st) century art has used these approaches (media) which artistic photography has for the large part ignored. </p>

<p>I do not see any limitations on the approach, but maybe I am artistically too optimistic? I agree that the intention of art is to communicate with someone, unless the artist has decided he or she has no need for an audience and is undertaking the experience in purely personal terms (with little interest to show the work). I am trying to communicate all the time with my photography, even that part of it which I do for purely personal amusement. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>"... do you see no other possibilities in the use of collages or multi-image pictures?"</p>

<p>Of course. I may not have been clear about it, but it is a way for the photographer to communicate, and not only didactically. For myself, though, no (I'll include slideshows and other presentations, too) because I am interested in the photograph, the still image, the single one. I don't want to structure the viewer's experience any more than is necessary -- what it takes to show a photograph. I want my photographs to stand on their own and not require language to attract the viewer, no text card or expressive caption or title, and no system of signs within the image itself. Let the viewer make of it what they will, as they will anyway.</p>

<p>The above is probably not a good plan for those who exhibit a lot or have professional outlets for their work. I'll probably show at the arts festival here this spring, and I want to get a recent exhibit that occured just as I moved back here to become an annual event. But those are really extreme actions for me. It will take me several more years, maybe more than I've got left, to finish a body of work I hope to show, or perhaps publish, if even self-published -- "a gift from a flower to its garden", and then that will be that.</p>

<p>But I don't know why other photographers do not use the 'ptyches. Possibly because the have not thought of it or haven't seen any such work they admire.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>"I want my photographs to stand on their own and not require language to attract the viewer"</p>

<p>My feeling about "language" is not restricted to written text or symbols. Language can be visual and without those latter attributes. Communication with the viewer uses a visual language. When I occasionally can communicate in that way via my photographs, I sometimes get a feedback like "your image has meaning", or the like. In other cases, my photo may have a meaning to someone that wasn't part of the intended visual language, or it may have in fact had no specific communication intended. That's OK, as the viewer interprets the image in his own way anyway.</p>

<p>The attached photo is one that was intended to communicate a meaning (to some). It could have been part of a diptych or triptych or collage, but I don't think that complicating its visual language is necsssary in its case.</p><div></div>

<p>To put it another way, Arthur, I don't want intellectual language to cloak, explain, or intercede visual language. </p>

<p>"I sometimes get a feedback like "your image has meaning", or the like."</p>

<p>After looking at some of my photos, a photographer acquaintance said "Except for the cars and clothes, these could have been shot anytime in the last 60 years". Whatever his intention, I take it as a compliment.</p>

 

<p>Thanks for the Gotz link, Andreas.</p>

<p>He does triptyches of triptyches. (like a 3x3, for nine images) Each one backing off, perpsective-wise, leaving the main element fixed in sized (like a montain). Excellent.<br>

<br />And like Alfred opines, a triptych study of a single photo is possible many ones, another being naturally framed by window panes.</p>

<p>(Arthur, not Alfred, oops!)</p>

<p>I've always worked in series, and have always felt that photographys strongest means of presentation is the photo-essay. Personlly, if I want a piece of singular art to hang on the wall, as with most people I'd probably buy a painting. (no slagging, please. Though many here will disagree and say that a photo makes a great wall hanging...what is above most people couches is a painting or reproduction of a painting).<br>

I've long felt that the singular photo (unless it's a landscape or portrait) holds about as much interest for me as buying a novel composed of only one word.<br>

Better be a damn fine word!</p>

<p>I use photo collage techniques when a straight photo doesn't quite capture what I am feeling, as in these examples:<br>

<a href="http://picturexhibit.com/CollageThumbsPage.html">http://picturexhibit.com/CollageThumbsPage.html</a><br>

-Adrienne Moumin</p>