Repetition with a Twist

Pear Blossom Highway by David Hockney was a thrill to discover because he tackled the problem of one point perspective that limits both photography and art.  A person might take a photo of an awe inspiring mountain and suffer disappointment and disbelief at how insipid the printed image might look.  Or, an artist might wonder why a painting carefully rendered from a photo fails to capture the human experience.

Hockney is amazing because he not only took shots at multiple angles and presented it as a whole in the photographic equivalent of Cezanne’s still life’s, but also was able to show movement.  He could recreate the experience of someone walking to sit down in a chair.

I had been dabbling in photography for some time, doing an occasional photo collage and had an intent to do a very ambitious one for the Camarillo project.  Thus, Hockney’s book was of special interest.  (I also avidly went to museum exhibitions to see his work, attended lectures where he was the guest speaker and experienced the opera where he designed the sets.) Understanding Hockney helps to discern how the Joanna Series is different.

In the Joanna Series I am not using Hockney’s approach, but rather a micro-view in a way that includes and emphasizes repetition.  I am incorporating copies of the same photograph and showing not only different parts of the same image (which might be considered a very distorted semi-riff on Hockney and Cezanne), but also repeating some of the parts.  It forces the viewer to actually slow down and look in more detail and utilizes the artistic device of repetition to make a better composition.

In the Watchful Eye, I incorporate both Hockney’s technique and mine.  But overall, this work utilizes a more Hockney type of approach.