We take for granted today the ability to combine photographs, text and graphics with a desktop computer to create a new image. In the old days - that is, before Photoshop - it wasn't so easy.

Darkroom manipulation is as old as photography itself a new exhibition entitled Collage/ Montage at the Jane Corkin Gallery reminds us. The dozen images of mainly European artists from the gallery's collection traces the history of pasting material together on a page from a way to make a large representation to a vehicle for making political statements.

The groupings make an interesting counterpoint to the continuing exhibition in the main gallery of straight landscapes by Brett Weston.

Collage/Montage starts with what at first glance looks like a large format calotype of the Roman theatre in Orange, France by Edouard Baldus in 1851. Closer examination, however, shows that it consists of as many as five separate images pieced together so the entire site could be seen.

Beside it is a 1870s albumen print of an artist's room by Meredick Mieusement (likely his own), made from two images. Collages like these, however, were made to overcome limitations of equipment, as opposed to making a statement.

Photomontages began appearing in Europe in the 1920s reflecting the turmoil of the First World War, the industrialism and the avant-garde movement in art.

"We chose one of the important expressions in the art world that doesn't necessarily come from the world of photography because a number of artists used the camera in their art," explains gallery owner Jane Corkin.

Among them is one by Georges Hugnet, one of the earliest to create purely photographic collages, who combined a view of a Paris Metro tunnel and a female nude with wings to create a modern version of a Fallen Angel.

Another Hugnet, a grouping of women in bathing suits combined with two black leopards could be seen as an interesting statement of femininity.

Corkin is obviously taken by an image by Laure Albin Guillot from about 1940, which juxtaposes negatives of a modern woman in a couturier dress looking down on a classical sculpture of a woman. Guillot, an icon of feminism in her time, says Corkin, has placed her heroine "looming high and beyond, looking at her ancestors and towards a new future of women."

Also on display is an original anti-German 1942 montage by Russian Alexander Zhitomirsky made to be a poster and dropped behind enemy lines, and a collage of 1920s Soviet film personalities by Konstantin Kazansky.

A recent David Hockney montage of snapshots of his mother sleeping on a chair shows how the technique has moved from a statement of rebellion to a construction of a different kind.

The Weston images, by contrast, represent a traditional stream of landscape photography. These relatively small (roughly 7 by 9 inches) photos are almost soothing compared to the jumbled collages next door. Weston admires curves in dunes and women, as well as the straight lines of San Francisco and New York.
These two exhibitions speak about photography's power using competing levels of manipulation. The choice is yours.

Collages/Montages runs to July 27, at the Jane Corkin Gallery is located at 179 John St., Suite 302, in T.O., south of Queen St. W. For more information, call 416-979-1980 or e-mail info@janecorkin.com.

- Image courtesy Collages/Montages

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