Observations, Editorial, v02
Second post of two, in which I bring a curious eye to some of my finished collages and write ten things about them.
First post, and a little more explanation, here.
-
1. The painted blue frame (acrylic Prussian Blue, I think) stands out in this series. Does it belong in the series? I'm not sure if this element makes this piece fundamentally different or not.
2. With seven collage elements, it's the most collaged piece in the series, and also the smallest.
3. The blue contrasts well with the yellow and oranges of the top photograph. It's obviously a picture of a woman, but cropped so that there are no real facial features. It also appears to be a studio/posed/art directed photograph, instead of a simple snapshot.
4. There's typography in both French and German. The handwriting is German, but hard to read. It's not "Wohung" or "Übungen", but I can't say what exactly it is.
5. The two angled tears in the middle and lower right line up quite well. I also like the two horizontals formed by the white gesso and the top of the black and white photograph.
6. The rock shapes in the BW photograph echo (though not perfectly) the woman's hairline. The woman's hairline leads us to the written word, while the rock landscape draws our eyes to the tears and the empty space in the bottom right corner.
7. Rome. I'm not sure what more to say about it. It's a city. I've been there. It's quite lovely.
8. The two vertical body typefaces are different, which you can see in the "a" and the "e". The German "e" is a little rounder and the bowl of the "a" is a little fatter.
9. The top of the "E" in "ROME" ends close to the vertical midpoint of the collage. If it weren't for the woman's face in the top right corner, the collage would feel very bottom-heavy. A face commands a lot of attention.
10. You can find a little bit of the bottom right paper color in the photograph of the woman, but it's more of a suggestion than a direct reference.
-
1. Of all the collages in this series, this one feels the most "editorial" to me. I could imagine this accompanying a story about postwar economics, and how "normal people" could buy houses, and reinvent themselves in new countries.
2. E.v. could stand for "eingetragene Verein", or registered association, but if so the letters are incorrectly capitalised. The "E" would be lowercase and the "v" uppercase. So maybe it means something completely different.
3. The photograph was taken on 01. Oktober, 1954. It's interesting how there's a fifth person standing in the background, aware that they're in the photograph but not part of the family. Are they captured mid-step, or had they stopped? A 1950s photobomb? Based on the shadows, it looks like it was a sunny day, so it's possible the exposure was fast enough to catch someone mid-step and not have them motion blurred.
4. The woman isn't looking at the camera, but to her right, camera left.
5. Its a sunny day and perfect for a Spaziergang.
6. The Fraktur/Blackletter script on the book page suggests that's its pre-1941 or so. There's a date mentioned: 28. Juli, 1878. Earlier in July, 1878 was the Congress of Berlin, that officially recognized the states of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro in the wake of the Russo-Turkish war. Any connection? No idea.
7. The red paper with 17, 25, and 24 comes from a Russian alphabet primer, I think. The main horizontal line *almost* lines up with the bottom edge of the black ink texture.
8. The black ink texture is excess ink from linoprinting rolled onto found paper. I like the black inked paper, sitting on top of black paper, and then with one more black and white element sitting on top of it. The palette in that region is nicely consistent.
9. Red and white are natural contrasts to black, and are used in plenty of flags, including Nazi flags.
10. The collage having mostly right angles, but not exactly is nice. It suggests a bit of humanity in the accounting, and a natural imperfection in the collected story. It's more human with uneven angles.
-
1. F 176 looks like a border-crossing, but I've not been able to identify it. There was no inscription on the back of the photograph.
2. The tiny white brick house appears to have a fireplace and maybe the shape on the left is a gas filling station? The picture looks like it's somewhere remote though, and I don't know that it would make sense to have a filling station at a border crossing.
3. It looks like the woman is holding onto a crank, but it's not clear what it operates.
4. Is the flag red and white? It looks a bit like the Austrian flag, but I believe the red bands are more equal in height to the white band.
5. I like how the orange rectangle on the left echoes some of the orangey and yellowy colors in the map in the lower right corner.
6. The two black and white photographs that make up the background do not match. It's most obvious in the offset white frames around them but if you don't focus too carefully it reads like one consistent landscape.
7. The camera was probably set up on a tripod, or the photographer took care to orient the camera properly so that the vertical lines of the white brick house are nearly dead vertical. There's very little distortion going on in the image. It would be nice to be able to see the top of the chimney, but maybe the photographer couldn't back up far enough.
8. There's a bit of treeline behind the house that matches the angle of the hillside in the background black and white photograph. That's a nice touch.
9. "Genver See" is Lake Geneva. Mt. Blanc is visible in section D1 of the map.
10. The edge of the small white house to the woman's left nearly lines up with the left edge of the map.
-
1. At three elements, it's the simplest of the collage in this series.
2. The paper *almost* touches the young man's hand. How good is that?
3. He wears no watch (on his left arm) and his sleeves are a bit short. Is he outgrowing his clothes? Are these hand-me-downs that just don't fit correctly? Maybe this was the style at the time.
4. There's not enough of the letter, written in pencil, to tell what it's about. Recognizable words include, "was", "alles in", "wir", and "dann".
5. The brushstrokes in the painted element echo the horizontal shingles in the photograph. Were the painted element rotated 90 degress, they might echo the lines of written words.
6. It looks like the young man is standing in front of a house, with a window to his left and an open door behind him. There's some abrasion in the photograph occluding the window and making it hard to tell what the dark shape underneath the window is.
7. If the reddish orange color was closer to blood red, this would feel like cover art for a true crime book or podcast. I'm glad it's not.
8. I'm assuming he's wearing a suit and the bottom of the suit jacket is obscured by his hand, but that may not be the case.
9. The tear points directly to the young man's hand.
10. The top of the tear is almost aligned with his shoulder, which is the highest part of his body that we see.