Digital Surrealism Project

In this assignment, we needed to learn how to answer this question. “How do I create a photographic art piece, in the surrealist style?” The answer I believe is SYMBOLISM. It’s a word that comes up quite often when discussing surrealism, and that is for a reason.  Symbolism is used extremely often in this style. Effective symbolism rarely makes sense to anyone else other than the artist, which leaves it up to interpretation.

I used symbolism in my piece mainly with the masks. They symbolize the fake emotions that people who are suffering use to get people not worry about them, but everyone has a mask. Everyone’s dealing with something. Whether it is selth loathing, troubles at home, or even homosexuality. The reason people have these “masks” is that they’re afraid what people would think of them if they saw what was behind.

For this project I was very inspired by the photomontages of Jerry Uelsmann. When I learned that he did none of his work on Photoshop I was extremely impressed. I have actually done a few of Uelsmann style photomontages in Photoshop so when I saw a master at work I’m determined to get to that level.

I personally thought I did a great job on this assignment.  All of the pictures I took were planned shots to get the lighting perfect.  I did little things like adding slight shadows under feet, and making subtle reflections to make the blending as seamless as I could possibly do at my level. I utilized the pentool constantly, and used masks as well. One thing I could have done better is utilizing masks a lot more. There were points where I just wouldn’t bother even if there was no point not to use a mask. In my future work I will make sure to use masks to my fullest advantage.

One thing I was very happy with was the tear, on Diana’s face. No one brought eye drops the day of the shoot so I had to make it in Photoshop. I used a mixture of the pentool, gradients, and bevel & emboss to create something I was eventually quite happy with. This was an achievement for me because I’m not used to creating elements in my photo manipulations, so this was something new for me, and I was proud of how it turned out.

All in all, this piece was meant to communicate a very important issue. I thought the name “Our Masks” was appropriate, because everyone has a “Mask”.