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One final photomontage, which although it's mainly black and white, (i.e. the old image) does manage to marry up the brickwork of the Board School on Bucks Row rather well, even if I do say so myself.
Here the colour of the modern day image "bleeds" into the black and white photo.
Hi, Andrew; your montages of Berner St & Mitre Sq. are amazing!
Anyone interested in the processes of photo montages, manipulating images, etc., might be interested in a book called 'The Commissar Vanishes.' It documents the Soviet Union's early talent for photographically 'erasing' individuals from historic photos when they fell out of favor. The result was that 'History' was maintained in a strictly artificial state of 'Contemporary Political Correctness'.
This process began in the Teens & went into hyper-speed under Stalin: yesterday's favorites who had been photographed clustered around him at the dacha were routinely 'liquidated'. Instantly, all offensive images of that very offensive individual were altered to make him 'disappear', but the alteration was so smooth the average citizen never noticed the change. (George Orwell expressed this weird un-reality in Animal Farm with the 'rules board' that changes all the time while never changing at all.)
In the book, the same 'Happy Comrades with Glorious Leader' photo is presented in its 2nd, 3rd, 4th, & 5th 'Version of Reality' so you can compare the changes. Their techniques began fairly crudely, but quickly gained sophistication- I can't imagine what they could have done with PhotoShop! Stalin even had pictures of himself skilfully blended into early Revolutionary photos, to 'prove' to the world that he was there with Lenin at the start, even though he wasn't.
The old Soviet Propaganda examples of early photographic alteration intended to blur history & erase the past are so interesting... And they make me extra glad to know that all of you are exerting your talents to do the exact opposite, which is to help us envision the past with greater accuracy. Thanks, Archaic
It's interesting to note that the "alterations" you mention were done by hand, effectively re-photographing the original image, to fit in with current "political thinking". A lot of cutting and pasting by hand, using craft knives and glue!
A similar cut and paste operation is often mentioned with regards to the "backyard photographs" of Lee Harvey Oswald, in the case of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, although whether the marks on those images are "manipulations" or just blemishes on the original photo, remains to be seen.
Hi, Andrew; good point about the Oswald photo- I've heard so many conflicting theories about that photo I can't keep them straight anymore.
I just checked GoogleBooks for 'The Commissar Vanishes', and although there's no 'Preview' available, it does show the book's cover image... four successive versions of Joe Stalin & His Pals'!
In case you can't guess, as the versions move forward in time, The Cheese Stands Alone.
Here's William Whiffin's image of Mitre Square superimposed on to a modern day photograph....
[ATTACH]5640[/ATTACH]
... that would make such an interesting sculpture! I'm seeing two huge panels of stainless steel, with the images of early Mitre Square etched into them, jabbing into the sky. Great stuff, Andrew
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