by A. D. Coleman
The photomontages of Jerry N. Uelsmann are as instantly recognizable as any photographic images made in the second half of the 20th century. Today they stand as the progenitors of an approach to photographic image-making so well-established and widespread that it’s strange to recall the storm of controversy that raged around them as they first began appearing in the early 1960s. Partly due to Uelsmann’s consistent and determined efforts, the working definition of what constitutes the full field of ideas and strategies in contemporary photography is a far more expansive one than that which was operative when he set out on his path.
Unlike photocollage, with which it’s sometimes confused, classic photomontage is generated on photographic paper or film and often looks — at least at first glance — like unmanipulated imagery. Even when the combinatorial nature of the finished work is recognized it may offer little or no indication of where one component ends and another begins. Those who employ it deliberately propose a radical alternative to the naturalism that has been the stock-in-trade of photography since its inception. This traditional form of photomontage provides unsettling evidence that, paradoxically, although the camera must always address something in front of the lens, some photographs portray events that never happened.
Photomontage first attracted widespread attention in the mid-nineteenth century through the work of the Britishers Henry Peach Robinson and O. G. Rejlander, whose techniques and results were the subject of heated debate. In the 1920s it became a staple of modernist practice in Europe. But in the U.S. photo scene after World War II, the “purist” approach advocated by such figures as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams was dominant. They preached what Adams called “pre-visualization” — the full realization of the image at the moment of exposure; by their lights, any subsequent tampering with the data on the negative was anathema.
Uelsmann set out to demonstrate that there was another way. In his approach, the darkroom became a locus for what the photographer refers to as “in-process discovery.” Eventually, he developed his printmaking skills to the point where he could blend any number of those components seamlessly into one final image. (Eschewing the expedient of the copy negative, which many photomontagists employ as a labor-saving device, he continues to make each gelatin-silver print of any given image by reassembling the component negatives and starting from the beginning.) By the middle 1960s he’d produced a body of work that proved the viability of photomontage as a contemporary image-making strategy, along with a theory of “post-visualization.”
From the beginning, Uelsmann has elaborated a sometimes obliquely and sometimes directly autobiographical dream-world. Fundamentally, he’s a wanderer through inner space, a lyric poet using a new language to recount his adventures. These images resist easy categorization: to label Uelsmann a surrealist, a pantheist, a mythologist, or a diarist is to disregard other, equally significant aspects of his work. What seems inarguable is that, in addition to proving the validity of his approach by producing imagery that at its best is unsettling, enchanting, magical, and oddly melancholy, Uelsmann has demonstrated a remarkable consistency of vision.
It seems to be Uelsmann’s fate to have established darkroom-generated photomontage as legitimate and viable within classic photographic practice by bringing it to its pinnacle of virtuosic expression, only to witness the obsolescing of that practice in its entirety by the onslaught of electronic imaging. But in building a wide international audience for his own work and encouraging his colleagues in their parallel experiments, he helped prepare that receptive soil in which computer-generated imagery has now taken root. It’s safe to say that no future study of the history of photomontage will be considered seriously unless it takes the theory, the practice, the teaching, and — most importantly of all — the photographs of Jerry Uelsmann into account.
© Copyright AD Coleman, shall not be reproduced in any form without permission.
A. D. 柯曼
在二十世纪下半叶的任何摄影作品中，一眼就能辨认出杰瑞·尤斯曼的摄影蒙太奇作品来。今天，尤斯曼的作品已经成为摄影图像制作的先驱、范本，久负盛名广为传播，以至于回想起六十年代早期刚刚出现的时候引起的强烈争议，竟觉得几分陌生，而对年轻一点的人来说，无疑是很难想象的。
照片合成与照片拼贴不同，虽然两者有时容易混淆，但是照片合成是在相纸或胶卷上生成的，并且通常看上去会以为是没有经过人工编辑，至少第一眼会这么觉得。尤斯曼的作品，即使意识到是将人工制作把一些事物与自然风景合成在一起，也都几乎或者完全看不出拼合的痕迹，合成的元素是从哪开始，又在哪结束。运用这种技术对当时处于主流地位的自然主义，大胆地提出了相当激进的新的表达方式。人们习惯地认为摄影机必须代表镜头前的事物说话，而合成照片却描绘了不可能发生的事情的影像，对事实真相制造了混乱的信息。
这些摄影作品不是记录“真实事物” 某一刻的表象，它们不是存心要混淆观众的视觉，让人们以为世界就是这些图像所表现这样。相反，它们是对观众向来认为相片可信、可预见提出质疑，提高了人们对影像可制作性的认知，引起了一系列关于影像的用途的提问。
争论一直缠绕着相片合成这一试验。最先引起广泛关注的是十九世纪中期亨利·佩奇·鲁宾逊和奥斯卡·雷兰德一导读性的文学作品，他们俩所运用的技术和制作的作品是当时的摄影师和批评家们最激烈讨论的中心。后来，把这种技术推广的是私语摄影——特别是明信片和人物肖像。到了二十世纪二十年代，它成为了欧洲现代派的样板，甚至成为了莱茨罗·莫霍利纳吉为包豪斯设计的课程之一，纳吉称之为“用透明叠印表现的同步视觉”。但是，美国现代派却拒绝接受它，并且由于偏见将之从美国摄影史中剔除。
即使摄影蒙太奇有受到舆论压制，但没有就此消亡。在尤斯曼等人开始从事这项实验创作之前，北美的实验摄影师比如芭芭拉·摩根、艾德蒙·特斯克、克拉伦斯·约翰·劳夫林和凡·塔伯格等人已经在探索运用。第二次世界大战之后，以爱德华·韦斯顿、安塞尔·亚当斯和西海岸派为代表的“正派”人士占领了美国摄影界，他们宣讲在曝光那一瞬间即是意味着影像的完成，以此论调，随后对负片的任何变动都应算是一种篡改，是不被允许的，用亚当斯当时的话称为“先成像”。
终于，尤斯曼把他的洗印技术发展到能够随意将许多元素准确地合成在一张图像里。（但他杜绝和其他一些摄影者一样贪图方便复制底片，他始终用明胶银盐印像法逐一把选中的图像洗出来。）到了二十世纪六十年代，他创造了许多作品，用自己的成绩证明了摄影蒙太奇作为一种当代摄影技术以及可做教育推广的方法论的可行性。
从一开始，尤斯曼就以时而间接时而直接的方式精心创作了一个自传式的梦幻世界的影像。在这超现实的作品形象地表现了梦境、魔幻、想象、幻觉中的场景，还频繁地出现人手这一经典超现实主义摄影的标志元素。图像之中充满了相对传统美术史意义上来讲很荒诞的元素。荒诞的色彩贯穿着他的影像作品，人的部分肢体神出鬼没一样在图像中若隐若现；在各种各样自然的事物中出现人形，或是和其它动物、无机物，植物等缠绕合成一体。
就像是一场宿命一样，注定尤斯曼要在传统摄影法中实验证实以暗房技术制作摄影蒙太奇的方法是切实可行的，并且以此把传统表现法推向顶峰，结果却亲眼目睹它在电子图像的猛攻之下完全过时成为老古董。在这意义上讲，尤斯曼建构了一个终结。但我们同时也可以把他看作是承上启下的跳板，他通过在全世界范围内培养自己的影像作品的观众、以及激励同行努力开创他们自己的实验，帮助人们做好心理准备迎接电脑制作图像时代的到来。
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