Digital Photography: 2009

Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann is a surrealist photographer who uses multiple images to create his pieces. These photographs are usually in black and white or otherwise sepia toned. His black and white images have a great range of values which contributes to the depth of his photographs. To achieve his double image technique he had to combine negatives in the dark room. For the time, the mid 1900s, this technique was very innovative and mysterious. The idea of surrealism is combine things that wouldn't usually interact. An example of this would be: a house growing from a tree. The human body is a common theme in Uelsmann's work. This theme is represented through images of hands, eyes, silhouettes and the full body. In most of his photographs there are also scenes from nature. The image below merges both the human body and nature as a woman flows from a river in the mountains.

Oscar Gustav Rejlander

Oscar Gustav Rejlander is a 19^th century Swedish photographer who, most likely, invented the technique of multiple image photography used by Uelsmann. Rejlander experimented with negatives. He layered them to create new images that had more depth and impact. Since he lived in a time when technology was not as advanced as Uelsmann, the quality of Rejlander’s photographs are inferior. However, this does not take away from their beauty. His images look almost like paintings with great care taken in composition and texture. The photos have very dramatic lighting; a characteristic of renaissance painting. The people in his photographs are also set up as if they were modeling for an artist who was going to paint them. Rejlander often used prostitutes as his models and his photographs often contained nudity, which was quite scandalous at the time. Like Uelsmann, Rejlander works mainly in black and white and sepia. However, unlike Uelsmann, those were the only options he had. The image below is a good example of the effect of layering negatives. Furthermore it shows the boldness of Rejlander to photograph nudity.