2. Jerry Uelsmann
Jerry Uelsmann originated from Detroit, America in 1934
and after receiving his degree from the Rochester Institute of
Technology he wen ton to become a graduate research professor of art
at a university in Florida in 1974 and is currently retired from teaching at
the university and is still living in Florida. Over the years Uelsmann has
received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship, he is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great
Britain, is a founding member of the The Society of Photographic
Educational, a former trustee of the Friends of Photography and his
own work had been exhibited in over 100 individual shows in the past
30 years.
Initially the photography that Uelsmann has produced has
been said to be heavily influenced by his own University lecturer, Minor
White who taught the young photographer that he would have to learn
to trust his own intuition and go with your feelings and thoughts when
putting a film into a camera and how to see the world in a different way
through the lens. He learnt to adopt the style of “I wonder what would
happen if…”, which would be the starting point of creating something
creative and experimental.
Jerry‟s photography has been displayed in galleries for
people to view and buy for a substantial amount of money. His
photographs have been in the permanent of many museums and
galleries including; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Chicago
Art Institute, the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London, the Bibliotheque National in Paris, the National Museum of American Art in Washington,
the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Gallery of Australia, the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Galleries of Scotland, the Centre for Creative Photography and
the University of Arizona, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and the National Museum of
Modern Art in Kyoto.
3. Jerry Uelsmann
Over time Jerry Uelsmann found a certain process that gave his photographs his unique
experimental style. By looking at the images that he creates, nowadays you would automatically think that
Photoshop would have a large part to play in the production of the photograph, however digital film had not
been invented at this point and Uelsmann had to develop his skills in the dark room when developing his
photographs to give the image the specific effect that he desired. He combined chemistry, light and the
base metal of silver to create the symbolic and psychological meaning to his images. Multiple decades
before the invention of Photoshop, Jerry had been able to successfully produce these complex and
experimental photographs using multiple enlargers, negatives, and an array of highly-refined masking,
diffusion, burning and dodging techniques.
Due to the fact that Jerry Uelsmann‟s work was produced in the 1960‟s, he would have been
using traditional methods of developing his photographs in a dark room, and produced his final images with
instruments and techniques that would have been traditional within that era, this makes his images fit into
the category of „Traditional‟ and „Historical‟ Experimental Photography.
4. Christophe Dessaigne
Christopher Dessaigne was born in the1980‟s in
the south of France and now lives in the small town of
Perpignan. With no photographic qualifications, Dessaigne
did not study the subject of photography and taught himself
about his passion, he is now working as a semi-professional
photographer creating images that have been used as film,
CD and book covers and has been featured recently within
Advanced Creations and PSD Magazine as well as Artpress
Magazine.
When Christophe was learning about
photography he discovered how frustrating it was, he went
on to create his own style and decided to go down the route
of using mostly post production editing techniques to create
his surreal and complex photomontages and considers
digital experimental photography an extraordinary way to
alter and experiment with an image and ultimately bring it to
be something fantastic.
Carrying on with his creative urge Dessaigne
threw himself into editing, as he found that the
possibilities offered by programmes such as Photoshop and Lightroom were endless. Christophe's work can
be of two different styles, either he will create „simple‟ images with little editing and post production
techniques, or he will produce sophisticated photomontages and be submersed within the process.
Dessaigne creates photographs that he describes as „open doors to a fantastic and dreamy
horizon‟, his images take the viewer on a journey and can have a large emotional effect on the viewer, his
„post-apocalyptic‟ series of images have been described as poetic and terrifying. The subjects and objects
within his creations are of a larger scale than they would be in reality, this makes the viewer feel
overwhelmed and can be confusing as his images seem to be out of proportion, he has created this
5. Christophe Dessaigne
effect with his very skilful usage of Photoshop, which has been used in such a way that upon first look, you
can almost not tell that the subjects have been tampered with.
The images below are good clear examples of the images that Dessaigne creates. You can see
that Photoshop will have been used, as well as the use of infrared film to create the image of the subject in
the woods. The way in which he has used these techniques gives him images a very surreal
dream like theme, however all of him images also have a
dark, eerie theme running throughout them.
The photographs that Christophe has created
over the years have found their place in the form of media art
work, his photographed have been featured on the covers of
86 different published books and also used for 11 different
CD album covers too. This would suggest that his work is
very versatile and can be perceived in many different ways
Due to the different techniques that he has used
to create his images, the forms in which they
have been used and the
era in which they have
been created would
suggest that they can be
categorized as „NonTraditional‟, „Contemporary‟
and „Commercial‟ forms of
Experimental Photography.
