This photomontage contains an image of Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God."  According to telegraph.com, Hirst is threatening to sue the 16 year old responsible for selling this photomontage on the internet.  Prof. Butcher has already stressed to us that, throughout the semester we are to produce artwork containing as much of our original content as possible.  Hmm.

     I think this piece makes a clear statement with the typical "what is copyright infringement?" argument that we know is a paradoxical can of worms.    Nothing in this photomontage is the artist's original content.  They copied and pasted it in a way that IS original though.  It looks decently seamless, but I don't think the intentions need it to be a flawlessly layered masterpiece.   

 This photomontage looks like it took a good bit of time to construct.    It has a modern-retro mash-up, like something you may see hanging in the male section of a trendy clothing store or maybe for young male adult cologne.  The male's hair style, and B. Franklin's large sized face on the bills subtly signify modern.  I read orange as the background with blue and the pink antiquated text as retro.  The female's hairstyle and her glasses signify both modern and retro to me because, I can't keep up with what's in, and everything always comes back.  The little bit of red drips just seem to help balance out the rest of the color.   

This photomontage is okay, but the washed out white and blueish purple makes it look a little cheap and almost inverted.  The photos are good, but again the blue-purp ruins her skin tone.  The layout isn't too bad, a bit unbalanced maybe.  The neon floral border is a nice thought, but it adds cheesiness and takes away from the photos.  I feel like I could do better than this, with some practice. 

This is by Jerry Uelsmann.  He assembled this and other photomontages by film and darkroom techniques.  Uelsmann was crafting his pieces while Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were huge as naturalists.  Jerry had support from faculty and friends for creating these montages, but when he took it to New York they said, “it’s very, very interesting, but it’s not photography.” (Interview) 
The blending is seamless.  He figured out that he could make his images with less struggle by working with multiple optical enlargers in the darkroom, moving from one to another.    Uelsmann only releases about 10 prints a year.  I was inspired by his images the most of any other slides we viewed in my Photo 1 class.  

 I made this in Photo 1.  I used 3 negatives, 1 enlarger, 8 hours, about
20 pieces of photo paper, and it's still miles away from high quality
blending.  But at the time, to me, it was fun and cool.      

 
Post-apocalyptic or supra-realistic?  Both?  This is a very well-made montage IMO.  The blending is congealing and seamless, but still overlaps with translucency allowing the fiery sky's mysteriousness to intrigue the young girl. I think working with the high contrast and large portions of shadows would make blending images a more forgiving task.