Jerry Uelsmann is my favourite black and white photographer. He uses multiple negatives and prints them onto single pieces of photo paper with multiple enlargers. His imagery is fantastic and surreal, and it seems that he stretches his imagination for every image he creates.
Uelsmann was born in 1934 and
was one of the first people to take photography to a different level. He was getting heavily involved with photography during the time when it was still, for the most part, being used as a documentary medium. There were not too many photographers who ventured outside the conventional realm of photography, and Uelsmann was daring and creative enough to make his own art form with it.I like to work with in-camera multiple exposures with my black and white film, and sometimes some of my images remind me of Jerry Uelsmann's work (though far from the same quality). He is an inspiration to me because I love surreal photography- being able to make scenes that never actually existed out of things that do exist, and images that force you to use your imagination. Uelsmann's method of printing and combining just the right images creates a powerful, other-worldly effect.
It is interesting that both of your entries feature work that is essentially rooted in landscape. Whether representative or imaginative, as in these two examples, are there creative itches you need to scratch that have to do with place representations, or perhaps organic forms?
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