I chose to research a photographer that has challenged my thought process in taking pictures. David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937 in Bradford, England. Although he originally was a painter, he explored drafting, printmaking, and set designing before dabbling in photography. From 1959 to 1962 he studied at the Royal College of Art in London, England. He was a very expressive individual, although seemed very critical to the artists as a mass. It came across that Hockney realized that there were two groups of students, those who are traditional, studying art and the classics, doing still life, life painting and figure compositions; and then there were those who were more adventurous, who were constantly full heartedly involved in their art all of the time. They were the ones exploring new media and mediums like himself. .
I was first exposed to Hockney in a film Portrait of an Artist (1985) a documentary of his London studio. It described his lifestyle and some of his famous works. I further researched his photographic collages in David Hockney Photographs by David Hockney. In the book there are a few composite images made from Polaroid photographs, then as time passes it seems like he started to use color 35-millimeter prints to create photo collages. It looks as if he developed ways of compiling these photo collages from hundreds of smaller photographic images. These individual prints are combined in a way to make a "complete" picture. It looks as if he took pictures of different details, angles, and distances of a single scene or person. It reminds me a lot of cubism and Picasso, except in photography instead of painting. For the most part his collages seem to be applied to landscapes, portraits, and still-lifes. .
What I like most about Hockney's collages is how unconventional they are. I had never seen a photo collage like these before. His works are large, usually around forty inches by twenty-five inches on average.
