South Africa in Transition
Brief: Get a second hand book of your choice, and use it as a medium for a collage.
Collage is one of my favourite techniques to work with, its experimental, playful and physical. For the collage project I wanted to try and create meaning and a story behind the imagery, and not just something that looks interesting. I found a book titled "South Africa in Transition" it documents South Africa during the 1950s through stunning photography. Instead of creating individual collages on separate A4 sheets of paper, I decided to collage into the book, with the intention that at the end, the book will still look and feel like a book, but it would be full of collages. I chose to format it this way because I felt leaving it as a book would end up being a much stronger and bolder piece, plus I'd not worked in that format before and I wanted to experiment and explore with it.
Using found imagery and multiple materials I began to cut, paste, tear, draw, paint and collage into the book. Initially I was acting to precious over the book, and the first few pages emphasise this, but as the book progressed I gained more confidence in risk taking, and ended up attacking the book with all sorts of techniques and materials. In terms of generating a meaning and story within the collages, I would use line, colour and other visual techniques to alter the imagery in a way that expressed my personal thoughts, beliefs and ideas about the book, but also that emphasised what the book was telling the reader.
Overall I am very happy with the final outcome. The whole process of collaging into a book, and retaining the format of the book, was something completely new to me. I found it extremely playful and experimental, and was able to take risks in terms of exploring and manipulating imagery. In addition, because the book is still a book, a story still runs from cover to cover, but in between are pages of my personal expressions, emotions and thoughts. The accompanying video was extremely fun to produce and make, and supports the final collage book. Below are photos of the book, plus a link to Vimeo, where I have created a short film displaying my collaged book.
