Lost, Found, & Reimagined
by Jane Handel
The found photo—anonymous, frequently distressed, sometimes historical but often not, diverse in subject—is prime fodder for an artist’s imagination. One can project onto it much creative speculation as it is devoid of attribution or provenance. Regardless of subject matter or condition, re-contextualized, the object itself takes on new meaning.
Since the artist is free to repurpose the photo in whichever metaphorical way they imagine, the work then conforms to a subjective narrative. Conceptually, the story that is being told takes shape either through darkroom manipulation (if the artist possesses those specific skills), through a collage interference (cutting and pasting onto another surface, most often, paper), through needlework (embroidering the actual photo), through painting or drawing on it, etc. Sometimes, the artist’s intent is purely aesthetic, an arrangement of disparate elements that create a composition that is pleasing to the eye. Whichever way the original object is manipulated, it is transformed into something other than its original purpose—the documentation of a person, a sunset, a building, a grove of trees, a fish caught on a line—all the myriad subjects we have chosen to capture with a camera on film or, more recently, digitally.
In 1839, Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot each invented a photographic process that created an image that was both stable and reproducible. Who did what first provoked ongoing debate at the time and persists today among scholars. Both Daguerre and Talbot were geniuses, each creating a fixed image that was very different. Talbot’s salt print bears no resemblance to a daguerreotype, and he was an artistic as well as a scientific visionary. As word got out, other individuals around the world quickly picked up the photo baton and ran with it. With the help of Eastman Kodak’s inexpensive cameras in 1888, and brilliant marketing gambit, “you press the button, we do the rest,” a glut of photographs of every description has inundated our lives. The tangible objects from the 19th century, such as tintypes, cabinet cards and albumen prints, were joined by the following century’s snapshots, press photos and movie stills. Many of these ended up in dustbins. Some became commodities, picked up by dealers at flea markets or, more recently, on the Internet. Some photos, however, found their way into the hands of artists.
Gail Pine, Adrift, 2021
Historically, artists like László Moholy-Nagy, John Heartfield, Robert Rauschenberg, Hannah Höch and William Wegman have used found photos as components in works that included other media like drawing or painting, or collaged scraps of paper ephemera. California artists Jacqueline Woods, Gail Pine and Dan LeVin follow in their predecessor’s footprints, but have embraced the use of found photos in their own unique and idiosyncratic ways. Pine and LeVin have studios in Santa Barbara, and Woods has a studio in Ventura.
Woods’ Thinking About (Picasso, Braque, Man Ray, etc.) photomontage series is comprised of faces, anonymous photographic portraits. Evoking the works of pioneer Cubist artists, Woods cuts the portraits into various shapes and places those elements in an enlarger, and then exposes them onto photographic paper. The result is positive cut pieces that create a negative image.
Her more recent Rolled series is comprised of actual photographs, usually black and white snapshots from different eras. The photos are meticulously torn into sections featuring specific elements like a horizon line or various women’s lips or eyes. These strips are then rolled into three-dimensional objects. Aligned either horizontally or in other compositions that tell a story, the rolled components are glued onto paper and the work is housed in a custom-made shadowbox frame. Augmented by evocative, poetic titles, the works invite an almost voyeuristic intimacy.
Jaqueline Woods, The Necessity of Words
Jaqueline Woods, We’re Clouds Over the Sea
Conceptual, themed series are also part of Pine’s process. For the past several years, she has been working around the idea of identity, especially of women. Some of the images become metaphors for the extent to which women in our culture become invisible as we age. By obscuring the faces of the subject, often a formal studio portrait, with objects, Pine leaves it to the viewer to imagine what lies beneath or to project themselves onto the anonymous person whose face is hidden.
LeVin, whose motto is “one man’s trash is another man’s career,” also cuts up or distresses found photographs. As an assemblage artist with a kind of Dada-esque humor, his use of photographs (and everything else) provides a glimpse into a mind that, for all its irreverence, is deeply thoughtful. There is a method to LeVin’s madness based on art history and aesthetics. The cut up, reassembled images, which he calls “smash ups,” are precise in their execution. Sometimes, the scratched or gouged surfaces of the photographs, (many are 19th century cabinet card portraits), seem to be random or arbitrary acts of destruction. The result is a textured design that turns the flat, one-dimensional image into a three-dimensional object.
Contemporary artists who manipulate found photographs in diverse, surreal, poetic, sometimes disturbing and often beautiful ways are legion. Numerous fiber and textile artists have embroidered photographs in a variety of expressive ways; the Italian artist, Maurizio Anzeri’s complex and elaborate stitched designs on portraits often have an unsettling quality. The puzzle-like photomontages of Seattle-based artist Joe Rudko are compelling as aesthetic objects as well as thoughtful essays on color and form; multi-layered and textured, the work of Los Angeles artist Nancy Kay Turner evokes memory; in Alabama, Butch Anthony’s Museum of Wonder is exactly what it suggests—a cabinet of curiosities that piques the imagination in humorous and thoughtful ways. Bay Area artist Travis Somerville often uses found photos to vivify American history, especially that of the Jim Crow South, bringing the racial turmoil of the past into the present.
A cursory exploration of the Internet or book compilations of collage art reveal a plethora of international artists who use found photos in innovative ways that are thought-provoking, sometimes strange, and always fascinating. It is a pleasurable rabbit hole into which one can plunge with abandon.
Cover Image: Dan LeVin, Suffragettes, 2016
