Victorian Visual Culture

To immerse myself in photocollage and attempt a multimedia exploration of this course’s concepts, I created my own Victorian-inspired photocollage.

Originally, I intended to use photographs of friends and/or family in the collage. Remembering that the post would be public on the internet, however, made me change my mind. Perhaps if I knew the collage would only be seen after my death and out of context, I would have felt more comfortable. My desire to maintain the privacy of people featured made me consider more fully the question of the invasion of privacy of the collages and similar work.

The primary difference in my process was the vast number of expressions per person to choose from—as they all appear on TV, there are frames upon frames available to the public, endless representations of the self. Like the phenomenon of having one or a few photographs of public figures in the Victorian era, it shapes the way we interact with photographic representations of people. Though these actors did not give permission for their faces to be used here, there is an underlying assumption taken for granted that once these media are made accessible, people can use them, at least within the realm of the law.

In keeping with collage tradition, I used watercolor for the scene. Kate Edith Gough’s work was the strongest influence. I wanted to use the roles of each character/persona in my representation of them, such that without context of who they are there is something lost in the appreciation of the composition. Rather than functioning as a social commentary, this functions more as a fantastical, Victorian representation of a media landscape and how certain figures interact with each other in the imaginary realm of entertainment. Were each person to create a similar artistic map of the foremost figures in their personal relationship with entertainment, it would reveal something unique about their person and the moment of time in pop culture.