Photographing architecture: an alternative approach

Abstract

In 1984 I found myself with a surplus quantity of photographs which did not warrant being entered into my photograph album. Spreading them out they formed a myriad of images of the container ship on which I had been travelling at the time. I decided to use pieces of these surplus photographs to try and create an overall picture of the ship travelling across the ocean. One of the reasons for cutting up these photographs and rearranging their positions was that each piece became an individual detail isolated from the rest. Using a rigid grid of approximately 1.5cm square portions of the photographs I composed a recreation of my shipbound experience at the time. I incorporated the pieces of photograph which gave particularly strong messages as to their whereabouts on the ship and placed them in a logical sequence from top to bottom. This was one of my first photomontages. (Fig. 1) The following year I was in Athens during the Greek general election. It was incredible to experience the amount of activity that was occurring in the main square of the city. I took some photos but it seemed impossible to capture the atmosphere of the place with any one photograph - the activity was occurring everywhere, from the middle to the edge of the square.