October 22, 2007

Al Magnus is a photo montage artist whose work has a surreal, lovely, dream-like quality. He plans his scenes, photographs the elements and scans them, and composites them into his montage digitally before printing. His images are planned in advance, some of them taking as much as two years to assemble all the photographic elements before work on the montage begins.

Jerry Uelsmann (Flash site, and some images NSFW) is another photographer who works in montages. Unlike Al Magnus, Uelsmann creates his images through use of multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work, using up to a dozen enlargers at a time. An interview with Uelsmann on the making of photographs and the role of art here. Uelsmann's wife is Maggie Taylor, formerly a photographer who now works digitally. Her compositions are created with objects placed directly on the glass of a scanner and then montaged. Her work is both whimsical and surrealistic. The paintings of Siegfried Zademack are also filled with the strange and fantastic beauty of a visionary dream. His work is divided into 7 galleries that showcase 153 of his pieces, as well as a smaller gallery of graphics and studies. Many of his images feature nudes, so working Monkeys beware the NSFW clickage here.

posted by Christophine 17 years ago
  • Excellent. Thanks!
  • I was only going to look at just one, but Magnus dragged me in. Beautiful thoughtful stuff - I hear them saying "life is but a dream, sh'boom, sh'boom..." Le derniere must be apocalyptic, n'est ce pas?,/i>
  • Awesome post...I'll be checking these out for days.
  • Like rocket said, many days' worth of beautiful things here. Another glorious post, Christophine, thank you.
  • Marvelous. Thanks Christophine!
  • Well now i'm depressed. Beautiful post, for all the linkage (the Maggie Taylor gallery appears to be 404 tho) But I just didn't like them. Too photoshoppy, too dark, too busy, no Christ-imagery, bah. I dunno,maybe it's me. Rayographs and more, though I like those. Maybe there's hope yet.
  • There's plenty of Christ imagery, petes! And the Rayographs are lovely too.
  • Err, yes I guess I could have phrased that grouse a little better - I meant I didn't want any : )
  • Oooh I see! never mind then *redacts above links* sorry
  • * mentally erases surprising new discovery about petebest's artistic tastes * Monkeyfilter: too photoshoppy, too dark, too busy, no Christ-imagery, bah.
  • I haven't looked at the others yet, but I would like the Al Magnus stuff better if there weren't young children in most of the pictures. They push the images into twee, Anne Geddes territory. The handful that don't have kids in them are, for me, a lot more effective than the ones that do.