Chapter 3 | COLLAGES WITH A BACKGROUND
In a collage with depth, you work from background to foreground. In the example, the background consists of a blue sky with rays of light. Three cut-outs from different images are pasted over this. A collage with only photo fragments, like in this example, is also called a photomontage.
Exercise 1: Make a collage by starting with a background and pasting two or more fragments over it.
In the following black and white collage by a student, the background is not one single picture as in the first example, but consists of several fragments. At first glance, this collage looks like a regular photo, but don’t be mistaken; many different fragments have been merged! The photos in the frames are from different images and the woman’s dress has been cut out of the photo of a bridge. At the top left, another part of the same bridge has been used.
Exercise 2: try to create a collage where even the background consists of merged fragments. Try out combinations before sticking the fragments. Sometimes you get the most beautiful and surprising combinations by chance. The nice thing is that a collage usually looks very realistic. Use sturdy paper or even cardboard.
I felt like doing something with this black-and-white collage: I first copied my student’s collage and cut out just the figure of the woman. Then I gave her a different (colored) background built up form newspaper clippings. This way, you can even use fragments of collages as a source for new collages. In this collage you can see that the edges of the frame definitely do not have to be straight.
