Collage 60 Artwork

I typically perceive my reality as quite visually unpleasant, often finding fault in the details, and wishing things were different. Therefore, as a photographer, I’m rarely interested in capturing the authenticity of my existence, but rather obscuring it. I’m compelled to take photographs that abstract my surroundings, hiding or greatly enhancing any perceived flaws, and transforming objects and spaces into more aesthetically calm and quiet realms. Using unorthodox and alternative methods to shoot and print my photographs (Holga, 35 mm manual camera with closeup filters, Polaroids, paper negatives, etc.), I attempt to reimagine the ugliest of corners into something more dreamlike, soft, and beautiful. Taking pictures allows me to build a world of my own making, tightly controlled, devoid of humans, and very nature-forward. In establishing such control, my collages take this command a step further. Utilizing my own imagery exclusively, typically employing color Xeroxes of my original photographs, I assemble vignetted reflections of surreality on paper, traveling further from the known, approaching transcendence. Through this process of framing life into dreams with my camera, and reframing again through paper collage assemblages, making art gives me a sense of order in the midst of the acutely felt chaos around me. The image at the top of the collage is a color Xerox of a Polaroid image I took of bedsheets with my hair falling in the frame of the lens. The middle image is a color Xerox of a photograph I took looking outside my hotel window in Lucca, Italy. The bottom of the collage shows a black and white photograph I took of a forest of pine trees. This collage is an original work of art, mixed media on watercolor paper, completed in 2023. © Libby Saylor