Five Film Photographs That Weren't Digitally Altered
One of my favorite pet-peeves, especially as a surrealist photographer who avoids heavy post-processing, is the assumption that anything that looks unbelievable is Photoshopped. In the early days of creating illusions without manipulating my work, I would spend extra effort to explain the process to my viewers. Nowadays I've grown used to the assumption's prevalence, and when someone tells me, "Cool Photoshop," I chuckle to myself because I've tricked them.
But what this generation doesn't remember was that photographic manipulation has been happening since nearly the invention of photography. Even Ansel Adams, the landscape purist who shot straight and sharp photographs of the American landscape, spent hours upon hours editing his work in the darkroom. Some of his landscapes are actually a composite of sky and land.
So in without further adieu, in the celebration of manipulated photography, here are five film photographs that were never touched on a computer.
1. Man on Rooftop with Eleven Men in Formation on His Shoulders, c1930
2. Untitled, 1969 by Jerry Uelsmann
3. Room With Eye, c1930, by Roger Parry
4. Oh, Sheet!, by Thomas Barbèy
5. Man Juggling His Own Head, c1880, by De Torbéchet, Allain & C.
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Yours truly,
John Dykstra
2. Untitled, 1969 by Jerry Uelsmann
3. Room With Eye, c1930, by Roger Parry
4. Oh, Sheet!, by Thomas Barbèy
5. Man Juggling His Own Head, c1880, by De Torbéchet, Allain & C.
The darkroom and all the tools within was their Photoshop. Just sayin' ;)
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You're not wrong! It's incredible what they were able to pull off, but by all means, I don't discredit digitally composited photography either. One of my favorite photographers is Noell Oszvald, though she prefers to call herself a digital artist. She creates these beautifully clean and minimalistic images, while piecing up to a dozen different photographs per piece.
It was over the course of several interactions with the public that I was inspired to see what was possible without Photoshop, and that's how I was driven to create the illusion photography I create today. There are many times people look at my photographs and tell me they're "Photoshopped" (though we all know what that means: heavily manipulated or composited work.) I actually gave up compositing in 2015 and began my anamorphic illusion work in 2016.
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Man, those are some pretty images. Does she pose herself or does she use a regular model? It seems to be the same lady in all the shots. I personally generally shy away from that much processing, but I have to say she has an eye for beauty. Some of the pictures look like hand drawn. Very good.
I have my own reasons for not using Photoshop. In the rare occasion I need an image editor, I use Gimp, but generally I do all the post-processing on Darktable. I don't edit much, usually just some tweaking of exposure, shadows and highlights, and boosting of contrast and a little bit of saturation. There are times when either de-saturate or use a monochrome filter. :) Other than those I generally have no use for fancy editing software.
In a way all my photos are composites (hdr), as right in camera, I apply Dual-ISO to give my photos a larger dynamic range. A bit of cheating, but I think it's cool to have that little bit of leeway to make sure I come home with a shot I can work with, even if it seems a little bit under-/overexposed.
Oh, and sometimes composites are just fun. Just like the ones you represented in your post. :) So don't abandon that avenue entirely, it might some day give you just the ingredient you may need, to make your then-current artwork into a work of art. :)
And John, thanks for addressing me by my real name!
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She poses all herself. I might be mistaken, but she seems quite reclusive and enigmatic, though she was kindly willing to allow me to interview her over email (most of the information she gave me she asked that I didn't make public.)
I haven't tried Darktable yet, but I've heard it's a pretty solid piece of software. I've been hooked on Lightroom myself. I do quite a bit of editing for tonality, color, contrast, cropping, and sharpness, but that's mostly because the large files I get from my camera are completely flat and lifeless because it preserves so much information. I really do love editing, and I think one day I may or may not get back into composites, but not until I feel I've made my point and explored every facet of my current project. If anything, I might get more physical if I use multiple photographs, perhaps making collages by hand with the photographs I take and print out.
Take care, Jaro! Looking forward to seeing your work continually improve and discovering which direction it leads you. :)
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I love this! ❤️❤️❤️ This just proves that creativity doesn’t always need Photoshop, haha!👍🏻
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That's the truth of it! The composites they pulled off in the old days were pretty amazing work.
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As a non-photographer, i'd really like to read how were they made.
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Hey Laxam, they're typically made by shooting multiple photographic negatives and using dodging and burning (which is blocking or exposing more light on certain parts of the print) to expose the different negatives onto the print. Number 5, for example, they would have cut out the head from multiple negatives and placed it over the base negative of the man juggling heads. They used layers of negatives, sort of how digital photographers use layers in Photoshop to blend together to create a single composited image.
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Thanks for this answer, those photos puzzled me a bit, hihihi. I think those kind of photos, without the use of photoshop, your kind of photos, show more creativity and hard work the those with photoshop...
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Thanks for taking the time to give me an answer. Very interesting.
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