Annexations - A Photomontage Series - Jon Wollenhaupt Photography

Annexations — A Photomontage Project

Annexation – The act of annexing or uniting at the end; the act of adding, as a smaller thing to a greater; the act of connecting.

Project Statement: The surrealist photomontage images in this series were created by spontaneously and unconsciously associating and merging (uniting) disparate images that previously seemed to have no relationship to each other. The resulting images in this series were created from found candid and studio portraits, urban street images, landscapes, and found imagery that I captured from advertisements, posters, murals, and graffiti. In a world where reality and facts are constantly challenged, and where misinformation is widely distributed by faux pundits, conspiracy theorist, and corrupt media outlets, these surrealist images provide a means of reimagining the world and recalibrating our emotions to it.

“Photomontage is an artistic practice that has endured almost since the birth of photography itself.At its most basic level, the photomontage is a single image combined of two or more original and/or existing images. The artist in question produces a montage in order to encourage their audience to think about the relationship between the grouped images. The photomontage will be achieved by cutting and pasting, while original or found photographs can often be placed next to non-photographic images (such as written text and even patterns and shapes). A “new” image might also be created by altering an original photograph through tearing and cutting. In every instance of this artistic approach the viewer is required, be that consciously or unconsciously, to make sense of an original artwork composed through image associations.” – The Art Story