Elephants
Thomas
Herbrich
Keywords :
bridge
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dream
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elephant
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photomontage
About this photograph :
Elephants
It is about a technique where an image results from a fusion of several images. «I have only even made manipulated images» he declares. Elephants crossing a bridge. Hallucination, vision of a world purely poetic, unsettling strangeness or the familiar is twisted, where the juxtaposition, the combination of the elements fascinates.
« It was a publicity campaign for a company that specializes in concrete. We constructed the set in a studio in London. The construction, made of Styrofoam and coated in plaster, measured 5 meters in width and 3 meters in height. The bridge was made of wood. For the 12 elephants, we fabricated 4 models, adding different ears and trunks for each of them. I took the photo with a 20x25 cm camera but the result was not realistic enough. The photo had too much resolution, I was thinking less resolution, near to a snapshot taken with a small tourist camera, would be more appropriate. While I was taking the photos, the commissioner asked me for a diagram of the bridge, just to see if the construction could really support the weight of the elephants. After 2 days of checking, a source of anxiety for me, the decision was: Yes, it's possible! ».
About the artist :
Thomas
Herbrich
Born in Düsseldorf in 1955, he begins his career of photography in a studio of still life. « In a sense, even the photos that I create today are always « living», the only difference is that I no longer arrange the objects on a table but I assemble photographs in order to create a new image». 1968 : the opening of 2001 Space Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick, a visual shock for the young photographer, the aesthetic of the film has not ceased to this day to influence his work.
To know more about Thomas Herbrich