Pearblossom Highway #2 - David Hockney
Vincent St - Adrian Brannan
Whenever we look at anything, no matter what it is we always have the intention to compare one thing to another. And this happens a lot more when we look at two pieces of art. After some online research about collage, I found these two photo collages that interested me so much. The one I love most is the “Pearblossom Highway #2” created in 1986 by David Hockney, who is an English Artist. And the other collage is from a young photographer from Glasgow – the “Vincent Street”. The theme of these two collages is the street. they have the same theme but there are so many differences between them. The technique is different, the way the photographs are placed is different, and the way the artist took the photographs is also different.
Although both artists do photo collage, I prefer Hockney’s work because he uses the “joiner” techniques, he shows a realistic portrait of a place and he works in many fields.
A collage is a type of visual art in which different forms of media are stuck or glued together and create a new whole art work. The media that a collage can contain may include: newspaper, ribbons, colors, hand-made paper and photographs. All of these media will be glued to a piece of paper or canvas.
“Vincent Street” is a more traditional example of photo collage, but “Pearblossom Highway” is more unique because Hockney took many pictures very quickly in one place and then he put them together to make it look like a regular photo. This technique is called “joiners”.
Hockney was born in Bradford and educated at Bradford Grammar School, Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. He is a painter, he also has some movies that made about his life, he was a teacher, a photographer that do photo collage. With the experiences by working in many fields of art he is regarded as a great artist and designer.
“The Pearblossom Highway #2” by David Hockney is from 1986 shows realistic details of a Californian desert highway with garbage by the side of the road before the “green movement”. Although Vincent Street is a lot more impressive but it is not a realistic picture of a place while Pearblossom shows a real moment in time. Moreover, behind the photo of Pearblossom Highway, Hockney also has his concept in his work. He wants to show the viewer the perspective of the driver by making the right side of the highway is full of street because when driving the driver always has to look and pay attention at the street signs. The passenger will never have to look at the street signs, and that can explain why the left side of the street has no street signs.
He called his collage “joiners”. He began this style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout. The subjects would be move while he is photographing them so that the piece can show the movement of the subjects being seen from the perspective of the photographer. He accidentally discovers “joiners” while he was working on a painting of the living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took a lot of Polaroid photo of the living room and then glued them together with no intention to put them into a composition. After finished glued them, he realized that it created a narrative, just like the viewer moving through the room.
Adrian Brannan graduated from Glasgow School of Art in June 2000. He is now a full-time freelance photographer. The special things about Adrian photo collage is that his photos taken from different locations and moment of time. Moreover, there are no digital processes in all of his photos, and most of his photographs are printed in his own darkroom.
“Vincent Street” by Adrian Brannan was created around the year of 2000 -2007. In this time period, with the development of technologies and digital equipment Adrian Brannan works have a lot of advantages in working with photos. In the photo collage, Vincent Street shows Glasgow as a busy city. Nothing is clear, so we can’t see the details like in Hockney’s photo collage. All the elements to determine a place, time of day, weather condition are blurred. Because he put hundreds of photos taken from multiple locations with different type of films and processed techniques, at different time and days. If we take a closer look into the photo collage, we can see that the photos of the street was taken in different condition, some photos show the street is wet but some is dry. Also the photos of the sky, some was taken in daytime and some was taken at night. The buildings also created by combining different photos of buildings, this can be different buildings or same building but at different period of time.
In conclusion, I appreciate the work of Hockney more because his techniques in taking photos and the way he play with them and place them together. His work can show the real moment in time, and moreover we can feel and see the different perspectives between the driver and the passenger. He made his artwork become a form of real human interaction and communication.
