by A. D. Coleman
In her digital photomontages Maggie Taylor opens for us a multitude of doors into a seductive, richly nuanced world of the fantastic. However, unlike many who explore the cross-breeding of imagery that digital systems enable, Taylor creates a microcosm with deep ties to the distant past of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
She achieves this by incorporating into many of her images fragments of old photographs, mostly portraits of individuals, of family clusters, or of small groups.
Beginning in the 1960s, photographers and others involved with the medium found themselves drawn not only to conserving some of these images and objects but also to considering how they might
recontextualize such artifacts and return them to active life in the postmodern image environment. Digital imaging has facilitated such explorations in unprecedented ways, expanding the ranks of those involved in such investigations.
Grounded in the traditional craft of photography, Taylor spent her first decade in the medium making suburban landscapes in black & white and still lifes in color with an old 4×5 view camera, working in natural light. Then, in 1996, she began to explore the operation of the flatbed scanner as a different form of camera, gradually moving toward a production system that’s entirely digital.
She started with an Apple computer and scanner that Adobe had sent to her husband, Jerry Uelsmann, in the hope that he would exploit its possibilities. But Uelsmann didn’t find these new tools suitable for his purposes, and soon set them aside. Taylor took them up, made them her own, and began to build what has evolved into a durable and substantial body of work.
A common misconception holds that digital photomontage is considerably easier than the same activity in the darkroom. In fact, intricate, detailed works like those of Uelsmann and Taylor are equally labor-intensive. Using multiple negatives set up in different enlargers, along with a repertoire of standard printing strategies (burning, dodging, masks), Uelsmann generates his photomontages by employing techniques common to photography since the late 1800s. Using multiple scans, Taylor superimposes her selections on each other in Photoshop; her images may have 60 or more layers, each carefully adjusted to the others, not unlike lacquerware.
Taylor makes all that effort invisible, so that the viewer experiences only the result. In addition to old photographs she also scans other images, as well as objects, man-made and natural, and incorporates photographs she herself has made of landscapes and other subjects. Yet no matter how disparate the components when she starts, or how improbable her scenarios, when she’s done the images appear seamless, each element integral to the whole.
By turns ominous and comical, somber and tender-hearted, Taylor’s digital montages invite us into a decidedly irrational alternative universe in which women float like balloons and wear fish as hats and seashells as dresses, cows hang suspended from the sky, and birds fly around carrying pictures of eggs in their claws. Taylor constructs new living environments for the people whose likenesses she appropriates, designing new spaces for their spirits to inhabit, rich with color, full of adventure and surprise. Taylor has also created visual counterparts to Lewis Carroll’s beloved fable, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, making images that can evoke his magical narrative yet also stand alone as autonomous works.
Now at mid-career, Taylor has established herself as a gifted digital photomontagist. Digital imaging may threaten to undermine our assumptions about the reliability of the photograph as evidence, but at the same time it offers us new and unanticipated ways of making active use of the photographs that swarm around us. Maggie Taylor has populated a new planet with the ones that have come her way. She invites her viewers to come and visit, while also encouraging them to bring forth new worlds of their own.
© Copyright AD Coleman, shall not be reproduced in any form without permission.
A. D. 柯曼
玛姬·泰勒在她的数码相片集锦中，向我们开启了许多扇通往奇妙的变幻多姿的梦幻世界之门。然而，玛姬与其他醉心于用数码方法制作眼花缭乱的影像的人不同，她的作品与一种过去紧紧牵绊在一起，这种过去不是我们每一次闪光所意味的那稍纵即逝的瞬间，而是十九世纪末二十世纪初那一段过往。
玛姬通过在废纸堆或者易趣网上收集旧照片，择取其中部分图像合成在自己的作品之中。那些旧照片大多是人物肖像——个人照，全家福或者集体照，是当初影楼里还没有自动曝光技术的时候拍摄的原作（受当时的摄影技术限制）。当时摄影本身还是新生事物，可以看见快照时代到来之后，对我们来说已经消失的面对镜头时的那种拘谨的神情。照片中的人物穿着影楼临时提供的服装，在镜头前表情严肃，对很多人来说，那是他们第一次拍照，或者对某些人来说，那可是生命中唯一的一次。
玛姬是传统摄影技术出身，她摄影生涯的前10年致力于拍摄市郊黑白风景和彩色静物，用一个老式的4×5英寸取景式照相机在自然光下拍摄。而后，1996年她开始试着操作平板扫描仪，把它当作另一照相机来运用，渐渐地，她向着用完全数码的创作方式发展。
一种常见的错误想法认为：数码照片合成制作要比暗房制作容易得多。当然，启动电脑和扫描仪，打开图片处理软件，扫描两张图像，选中其一放到另一张上去，这比去暗房里冲洗胶片，先对一张底片进行曝光，再在同一张感光纸上对另一张底片进行曝光，确是容易得多。但是，也仅此而已。一旦想达到尤斯曼和玛姬的作品一样的复杂和细致的话，那就不同了，他们两个完全不同的图片处理过程有一个相同点，那就是他们的创造几乎都是劳动密集型的。尤斯曼制作照片是用十九世纪末以来普遍沿用至今的技术，把许许多多底片按不同尺寸放大，再用上标准洗印的各个步骤（曝光、遮光、掩膜）；而瑪姬则是在Photoshop上，把许许多多扫描图片，挑选出来层层拼合，她的每张图片都达到60以上的图层，一层一层调整得很仔细，不亚于漆器工艺。
玛姬从来都不刻意表现她在艺术创做中所作的努力，尽管她已经达到大师水准。她把一切辛苦淡化、忽略，所以她的观众感受分享的都是她努力的结果。除了照片，玛姬还扫描其他人造的、自然的东西，还有她以前拍摄的风景等照片。无论一开始，她所用来合成的各个组成部分有多不同，她想描述的意境听起来有多不可能，只要她一完成创作，你就会觉得一切都那么理所当然，所有的元素都是都那么不可缺少。
她那些作品，也许是天堂、地狱或者某个缥缈空间的闪现，在那个地方，往生的人还没收到最后的死亡通告。玛姬的作品把我们带到一片非同寻常的天地，或者不祥，或者很滑稽，人物或者阴阳怪气，或者心地善良，在那里，女人会像气球一样漂浮着，鱼可以当帽子戴着，贝壳可以当裙子穿在身上；牛悬挂在天空中，鸟儿拿着鸟蛋的图片在鸟巢周围飞着……如果真像迷信说的那样，照片抓住了事物的灵魂，那么玛姬就是为她选中这些照片中的人们营造了一个新的生活环境，为他们的灵魂设计的新的居住空间，那里多姿多彩，充满了奇遇和惊喜。
如今，玛姬已经成为才华横溢的数码蒙太奇摄影师，和许多同时代的摄影师一样，从“湿”的“化学”的摄影技术过渡到使用电子设备，她发现她在数码创作的各个过程都与她从原始摄影中学到的所有技术相关。也许数码影像的出现削弱了我们一贯认为照片是可靠证据的想法，但它同时也为摄影技术注入了新的活力，为人们提供一种新的意料之外的方法，再一次激活身边成千上万的旧照片。玛姬携同她那些作品中的人物已经落住一个全新的星球，她邀请我们大家观众去参观，同时也鼓励大家创造自己心目中的世界。
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