Sern Kjellberg: Altered Images

Altered Images is a photo montage-an assembly of images that relate to each other in various ways to create a single work or part of a work of art.

David Hockney has described photo montage as a “photographic painting.” If a photo montage is a photographic painting, what styles might be used with photos? Expressionism, Impressionism, Abstract Art, Surrealism, Pop Art, Symbolism, Cubism, and Futurism could all be accomplished using photographic painting as the medium.

Serge Mendjisky (1929-2017), was a French painter and photographer who was first instrumental in starting this method using strips of photos to paint abstract images of cities and still life. After an early career as a painter using oil and canvas as his medium, he was well known for his impressionist style. In about 2000, Mendjisky decided to change to the photo montage style, using his camera to first photograph scenes that he then put into a photo montage /photographic painting.

In one of Mendjisky’s books, he tells of growing up around many famous painters because his father, Maurice Mendjisky, was a painter who belonged to the school of Paris. One of the painters his father knew was Picasso, who was quoted as saying, “True cubism will happen with photography.” Whether Mendjisky’s style was what Picasso had in mind, we will never know. We can only use our own imagination.