Victorian Visual Culture

While discussing Victorian photocollage in class, I was struck by the many similarities between collage making in the Victorian era and my own experiences decorating my senior carrel in the Mount Holyoke Library. Decorating a carrel has been something I have looked forward to for years, and I honestly probably put in way more effort than I needed to. What was originally going to be only a small portion of my carrel quickly turned into me burning through a lot of my printing money on pages of full-color photos of me with my friends, places I have been, pictures of pretty buildings/art/cool stuff, inside jokes I’m in on, my family, memes, etc etc. Every photo has a story, and I could point to any of the pictures and give you an explanation for where I took/found the photo, what it means to me, and why I chose that particular photo. The pictures quickly overtook the entire back wall of my carrel, and are slowly beginning to encroach on the upper wall above my bookshelf and the sides of the desk. 

Much of the intention within the Victorian photocollage was also present in my arrangement of photos on my carrel. I spent a lot of time (that I was supposed to spend studying) cutting out pictures, finding the right ways to layer them, spacing them out evenly across the space, and trying not to clutter too many of the same theme together. I found ways to leave little Easter eggs for my carrel-less friends who I know frequent the desk, and they have snuck their own contributions to my collage themselves. It has turned into a bit of a collaborative project. This feels, the way I imagine it, somewhat similar to a group of Victorian women sitting around a table and trading photos back and forth, all helping each other create something interesting and expressive.

Also, I can’t help but consider the discussion we had about the potential implications for collages that unintentionally left the sphere of their intended audience (i.e. collages that mock certain people making their way to the subject of mockery). I have unfortunately already fallen victim to such a fate. One image on my carrel is a years-old reaction image that my friend group uses. In this image, my partner’s brother has a snail filter on his face (which he posted in a photo dump on his public Instagram, to be clear). He looks ridiculous, and we circulated that photo within the friend group. I put it on my carrel, and unbeknownst to me, my partner’s PARENTS CAME TO VISIT MY CARREL OVER FAMILY AND FRIENDS WEEKEND. The horror. I’ve since learned my lesson, so I won’t be including the photo here, but just imagine it. I have a lot of empathy for anybody who dealt with some minor social consequences because a collage of theirs got into the wrong hands. 

Finally, I am obsessed with the Victorian animal collages. I made a similar image in October, well before I knew the Victorians also did this type of thing. The original two photos were of my legs emerging from a playground set, and the other was the head of a horse I rode while studying abroad. After printing, I noticed that they just happened to be a close enough fit to make me chuckle. It’s really fun to seek out these similarities between my own collage and the Victorian photocollage traditions, especially to see the silly things that persist. Like animal-head-on-human-body collage.