Expanding the stage

The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is mere tenacity. – Amelia Earhart

I find myself obsessed with working on pairing images and making collages lately, be it diptychs or triptychs. As I mentioned before one of my goals for my photography this year is to create more diptychs, hoping to give myself more practices to create some visual cohesion for my work. My initial goal was to make diptychs, that quickly blossomed into creating triptychs, and hopefully other collages too as I gain more experience.

As I am new to seeing images working in tandem, I find the process of looking for themes to tie images together to be trying at times, but I greatly enjoying the challenge as I see the process akin to writing a haiku. I gradually learn different ways to plant some visual or thematic clues to different pairings so my audience will grasp the meaning behind. I admit there has been a lot of trials and errors. Despite the slow learning process, I find the task to be beneficial to my photography. It has already breathed a lot of new life to my work by extending the stage to put in narratives where they are not possible with only a single image.

In addition, instead of making a portfolio with multiple images that share similar attributes, I have been limiting my selection to two or three images so far, I have to be thoughtful about what images will work together to achieve my goals. Much like writing, instead of having a full paragraph to explain my views, I am only allowed one or two sentences to bring my point across. I don’t have room to labor. I find this different thinking process enables me to see my own work in an entirely new light.

Granted, not every diptych or collage has to have a narrative, nor do they have to be meaningful. Casual pairings can work based on their aesthetics. From my limited experience so far, I find my collages are geared towards those that carry meanings, those that motivate viewers to think. Unknowingly, I find myself turning into a storyteller of sorts by expanding the stage for narration. These two or three-photo collages have the potential to tell deeper stories, give people multiple perspectives and by combining elements that, on their own wouldn’t have achieved the same visual impact. Most photos can be wonderfully meaningful on their own, however, by pairing images, I find there are more creative opportunities to tell stories, and in turn it adds more depth to my photos.

As things progress, I also experiment more with photos of different aspect ratios, pairing square format images with panoramic images is my latest experimentation. I find diptychs can be anything you dare to imagine. It is inevitable that certain photos won’t work together as I have hoped. I keep trying despite feeling frustrated with my failed effort at times. I find the pairing process demands a lot of patience, experimentation, planning and creativity. On occasions when my effort pays off and I find a successful pairing that satisfy my intention, it makes the whole process feel gratifying.