Harmony Collages:
I took South Congress settings, deconstruct them, and reconstruct them to have a semi-surreal feeling through the use of a lack of depth, juxtaposition, and visually interesting color combinations- making the images feel almost alien, because I am not from Austin and South Congress was a very alien setting for me while I shot.
In this collage, I wanted to focus in the messiness of South Congress. During the times I went out to shoot on South Congress, there was always some kind of construction going on. I felt like I captured the chaotic and sloppy nature that I frequently saw on South Congress. I also wanted to use colors as a compositional element. I used a color scheme of blue, pink, yellow, and brown to guide the eye throughout the piece.
This collage was one that I completed in class and later retouched. In this collage, I wanted to focus on the idea of negative space and framing devices. I used the negative space as a unifying element, and I took the blue sky and turned it into an organic use of positive space. I also wanted to experiment with layers, creating different planes on top of one another. This collage was inspired the interplay between geometric and organic forms that I saw on South Congress.
This collage was one of my first collages that I created in class. I wanted to play with the idea of negative space and show how the skyscrapers and manmade buildings reminded me of crystalline structures rising into the sky. I have always been drawn to skylines, and I was interested in how the negative space could become positive if it showed an inverted reflection of the buildings in the sky.
In this collage, I was inspired by the muted colors of the similar tan buildings. I wanted to further the idea of an inverted reflection, and I liked the narrative of an upside down world. I wanted to mostly play with color relationships in this collage and contract between the gritty found note and the clear setting. I also was interested by the confusion of depth by having all of the variations of flat color.
This was one of my earlier in class collages. I wanted to show the idea of a fractured setting and play with different masks and layers. The different masks got me started playing around with the idea of flat color. I also enjoyed deconstructing the setting and overlapping the pieces so that it gave the impression of a fractured photograph. I played with the color of the sky to contrast the early afternoon lighting with the perception of a setting sun.
