A friend and model recently complimented me on the fact that I tend to revisit ideas and concepts often. I’ve never been sure why it takes multiple visits to an idea for me to declare myself “done” with it. Lots of different artists tend to have the same trait, so I wonder if it’s just a part of the creative temperament to keep trying something until it’s “just so.”
Anyway, I’m not sure what it is about diptychs and multiple imaging that attracts me. Perhaps it’s just that I love cinema and the idea of using more than a single frame to tell a story or convey a thought is second nature to me. I’ve always shot a lot of frames when I work, so I think a natural outgrowth of my process is that various images in a given context will “fit” together. I think there’s also a subtext in a multiple-image piece that “proves” the first image wasn’t an “accident” and that I truly do control the process by which the images were created. Photographers, more than most other artists, seem to have an issue with the idea that what we do is accidental. All those people claiming that we “just push a button” getting under our skin, I suppose.
I’ve probably been doing diptychs of my work easily for a year now. I started off in a fairly conventional way – placing vertical images side-by-side in a horizontal frame, placing horizontal images one atop the other in a vertical frame. I used a white border for a while. I was happy enough with my results and got lots of positive feedback. There was still something missing from the pieces, though – I felt they could have a little more je ne said quoi.
Then I found the answer – or rather I stole it! I saw a photographer on the ModelMayhem site who was doing diptychs and triptychs using a novel combination of one vertical image and one horizontal one, matching the short-side width of the vertical piece with the long-side width of the horizontal one. It was totally simple, but it automatically gave a new energy and novelty to the diptychs. After doing two or three, I switched to a black border and my “new” method was complete. The “strip” feeling of the pieces seems to really command the eye, if only because of how very graphic it is – the size and shape of the image is such an abstraction of how we normally view a photograph that the content of the image is further invigorated.
The diptych concept has impacted how I take photographs as well now. I find myself stepping back during shoots to make sure I “see” the idea from both the vertical and horizontal plane. The trick is not to just repeat the image both ways, but to find a way where the two images will combine to effectively tell the story I want the viewer to know. I do have to be careful that this process doesn’t end up overshadowing the ideas themselves – a tricky balance, but a nice challenge to spice up the work.
But that’s enough explaining. I thought it most appropriate to start with three collaborations with a true muse and inspiration, MayanLee
NEXT: Candy
