A couple of years ago I did a photoshop collage about pain and love right after I had read a couple of books. I had recently read Romeo and Julliet, Macbeth, Extremely Loud and Incredibly close and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. All books (well mcBeth a bit less perhaps) are stories filled with love and the pain that comes from love. Whether it is a case of not being meant to be together, being betrayed by your best friend, Losing a loved one, or being denied the return of the love you have given or are giving.
Although not really sure why, I had to think of that collage and decided I wanted to do it again but now as a photo.
More after the jump.....
A collage
A collage of course can be many things, and it used to be so that you would just cut and paste your way through one, ie you make one by hand. Nowadays you can make the same by using programs such as Photoshop or Charcoal. You simply take images and by skillfully (or not so skillfully) making use of the program's functions you create something new. During the time I made the pain collage, this was something of a 'thing' for a couple of my friends, and although they were much better at it, I dabbled a bit as well. In those days as well I had trouble with being creative in the visual arts, so I forced myself. I picked 5 random emotions, 5 random countries, and 5 different colour schemes (grey, red, black, yellow, purple). I picked one of each and started working from there. In the end I rather like the result, although quite a lot is based on luck, and some other stuff is just not really finished (such as the jagged edges on the pills, but which I finally let in because I was listening to Jagged Little Pill, by Alanis Morisette). I threw in my favourite Latin saying: Ubi Amor, Ibi Dolor (I spelt it wrong, I know) just for good measure. It translates to: Where there is love, there is pain.
What's in here, what's in the photo?
The things I took out of the collage are the pills, cigarettes, the old master (get to that later), and whisky. The whisky is in plain sight in the photo, but harder to spot in the collage for it is in the background, or at least Scotland is. You can see an outline of Scotland in the back and that symbolises the alcohol. Luckies have been replaced by Malboro's and the capsules by round white pills. The text of Ubi Amor and the barcode (too long a story) have been replaced by the St Matthew Passion by the greatest of the great, J.S. Bach.
To me it still holds it's value as a photo now, and to me it can still resemble pain, or being in pain.
Let me know what you think of the photo.
Cheers
Hmmm... the piece of music could indeed be kind of sad (e.i. composer is in pain). The whisky and the pills resemble the pain it must have taken to compose that particular piece of music. I say: the musician lost the love of his life and was confronted with sadness and pain while composing the song which describes his life. that's how I interpret the picture... sort of I think ;) Nice work.
ReplyDelete@ Kaspar
ReplyDeleteThanks man. I hadn't seen it like that. It's absolutely great to hear your thoughts and incredibly valuable at that!