More Photomontage and Herbert Matter

Herbert Matter did not invent the photomontage, but "he certainly owned it as a means of expression" (Lances 2014).

Fig. 1: Matter 1943. [light drawing] 

Born in Switzerland, Matter originally was a student of painting.  Evolving into a freelance photographer all the way to filmmaker, graphic designer, and professor.  One of his international contributions was his work with photomontage.  

Matter understood photography as a tool for abstraction (Lances 2014).  

"The gesture, the action, the mark, are all there, just made through manipulated mechanical means. Are the resulting images more rigid and geometric in some ways than the pure distillation of action and performance in paintings by artists such as his friends Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning?  Yes, but not in a way that makes them any less liberating and revolutionary" (Landes 2014).


I like the powerful way he uses light in his images.  My tools and methodology are different but the influence is there.  

This isolation time of COVID-19 has been crazy and a trying.  School, working from home, and 'homeschooling' kids, including 2 teenagers and 2 emerging readers.  Careful of the government restrictions we spend our time slipping in and out of each others space, breathing each others air.  We all have our own identities, our own schedules and our own entourage of paraphernalia that trails us. We are a familymontage. 

Fig. 2: Slade 2020.

Fig. 3: Slade 2020.

Fig. 4: Slade 2020.

Fig. 5: Slade 2020.

Figure 1. Herbert MATTER. 1990. [light drawing]. V&A [online] Available at: https://library.stanford.edu/collections/herbert-matter-photograph-collection [accessed 18 May 2020].
Figures 2-5. Bren Slade 2020.

LANDES, Jennifer. 2014. 'Herbert Matter's Photographs.' The East Hampton Star. May [online]. Available at: https://www.easthamptonstar.com/archive/herbert-matters-photographs [accessed 18 May 2020].