Jean Jacques André 55 years…

 

55 years…

the 1950’s

In the mid Fifties when I began figure photography straight photographs of the nude alone were not fully satisfying to me. In my mind, regardless of composition, form and lighting, they did not have great artistic value. They lacked meaning. Their use was that of a sketchbook, notes, poses, and angles to be developed later into a body of work with more depth and creative merit. By 1956 I began to experiment with photomontages. Dark room “magic” opened the doors to what was to become a life-long dedication. This was an absolute revelation. A way that could enable me to express emotions and experiences stored away from my youth to the present, a way to communicate and share the joy of discovery.
Born in 1932, raised and educated in Marseilles, I was seven or eight years old when my first fascination with women began. I was obliged to attend the Opera on Sunday afternoons until the age of twelve, quite an ordeal but the ballet, for me, was a true miracle. There, were beautiful creatures, women who could not exist in this world, floating angels from another dimension. I was in love with them all!
The greatest influence on my work was that of my Father. He was a painter, a symbolist. Our house was filled with his canvases: nymphs and satyrs, Templars, and troubadours, myths and legends inspired by great poets. His palette and composition were dramatic and unique. In his paintings the human figure was dwarfed in fantastic settings and Dantesque landscapes. Those impressions have stayed with me throughout my life.
Other influences were my passion for nature, which drew me to the exploration of caves. There I could discover some of the dramatic tableaux and lighting effects which left such a deep impression earlier. Old castles, dark mysterious stairways, ruins, canyons tormented landscapes, these strange mysterious, places left an indelible mark in my photography. In 1951 I immigrated to Western Canada.
By 1954 I began my career as a photographer. Where I was living, I had no access to examples of photomontages, but at least I could find some of the best work from the Masters of the period. Among them was Peter Basch with his dynamic and action nudes, the sensitive work of John Rawlings, and a rare edition of the superb Betty Biehn who was probably the first fashion model to be photographed nude by the great names in fashion photography:  Fernand Fonssagrives, Philip O. Stearns, Frederic Smith, and others. In spite of this isolation, my early works were well received in photo salons and publications abroad.

the 50’s...early beginnings, learning lighting techniques...

the 50’s...first trials with textures, double exposures and the use of props...

the 50’s...experimenting with photomontages, the door opens to a new world of magic, where imagination is the only limitation !...

the 1960’s

The mid-Sixties were for me a time of positive influence from other painters, friends and photographers. Among the big names Sam Haskins is on top of that list.  Along with the outstanding beauty of his models was his talent as a graphic artist, and his darkroom wizardry. In contrast was Lucien Clergue with the simplicity of his images. Jerry Uelsmann was one of the very few who used photomontage techniques I had adopted ten years earlier.  Some of the best photographers of that period dealing with the nude were Phillip Halsman, Jean Loup Sieff, and Don Ornitz.  These artists reinforced in my mind the endless possibilities, styles, and creative opportunities available in working with this single subject, the female form. 
It was a very creative period, intense, stimulating, and honest.  It was also a historical  turning point in the liberation of women. The hippie movement revolutionized the hypocritical attitudes toward nudity. Freedom and celebration of love and life were the themes of the times.
In the early 60’s I ended the profession of photographer to pursue my career as a museum designer , thus saving photography for the sheer joy of it !!

the 60’s...inauguration of a new studio with the best of all lights..."skylight"..

the 60’s...Women feel liberated, and develop a new freedom of expression in their bodies allowing for more natural and relaxed attitudes and poses. a time also to explore the outdoors and its infinity of opportunities.

the 60’s...by the end of the decade I had completed the lay out for my first book of photo montages...a process I kept revising to this day !.

the 60’s...a decade very prolific in paintings as well as photography...

the 1970’s

This was a significant decade for me.  A great choice of models who enjoyed the new liberated status were available at that time. It was an ideal environment for figure work.  A very intense period, painting and photography in tandem with my full time profession as a museum designer was most demanding.  The pressure took its toll. Painting was my escape, and this aspect improved more than my photography which did not reflect a leap forward in creativity during that period.  I could in painting express my feelings and emotions better than with photographs. During this period, lack of time did not permit me to continue my work on the experimental montages I enjoyed producing so much.  The photographs done then failed to translate the emotion I intended.  This was a significant “wake-up call”.  It demonstrated my lack of ability as a photographer to communicate with the straight, unmanipulated image, what I could do with the photo-montage.  Certainly with the camera to depict grace or sensuality of beautiful models is easy, but it is not enough. It can so easily fall into the banal, trite or deja vu.  I wanted to go deeper, know and understand the subject, translate emotions and feelings.  Only dark room magic allowed me to do that freely and with competence.  Frowned upon by “purists”, photomontage was not always accepted, and yet to me, if a picture tells a story that is what really counts.  The technical process is secondary to the message.  The reaction the picture provokes is what motivates me.  Not to be accepted by the “Purist Club” added even more incentive to pursue my individual style.
My collected photographic work of the seventies was to be a great resource for my book on photomontages which has been in the works since the end of the sixties.

the 70’s... a period of "straight photography", at times influenced by the soft focus and "romantic" approach of the early 70’s.

the 70’s... an interesting transition from the classic to the sensual even the erotic, a reflexion of the attitudes developing toward the end of that decade.

the 70’s... a few montages samples of that lean period.

the 70’s... painting was the escape, easier, freer than the complexities of dark room manipulation.

the 70’s... sketches, oils, tempera, nudes and symbolism as the main themes.

the 1980’s

The 1980s saw great changes in photography. We cannot ignore the “cheese cake” magazine trade. In most publications the pendulum swung away from what had been an exciting display of competitive representations of the nude in its beauty and sensuality.  Instead, it fell into vulgarity and degradation, in many cases representing the female body as no more than a sex object devoid of beauty and soul.  I felt distressed to observe a crumbling of values and ethics into what was to branch out a decade later into an unbelievable market for open pornography.
The recent law authorizing photographic representation of pubic hair, a non-issue at first, eliminated at last the overly retouched bodies—sterile, plucked, “epilated” forbidden zones.  At long last here was the real woman, complete, mysterious, sensuous.  Sadly, for some, this was not enough.  In a short time, a race began among publishers to see who could be the most daring, to destroy that triangle of mystery, turning it into a pictorial gynecologist’s manual.   The spiral downwards began—from glamour, to erotica, and into obscenity.
My work during this decade is highlighted by a shift to a newer form of expression and photographic presentation, the multi-media “experience”.  Multi-slide projection was a direct by-product of my museum design work.  Here was the unique opportunity to test, create, and discover possibilities of presentation which could be applied to that work while remaining totally personal and experimental in their content.  The multi-screens and multi-projectors, ranging from three to twelve projectors, together with all the electronic hardware, sound mixers, tape decks, turn tables, etc. delivered quite an impact.  This created an extensive and costly build-up of electronic “goodies” which was a far cry from the three-enlarger dark room I had graduated to over this period.  It provided a leap forward in creativity and performance.  Here, I could write entire shows, and prepare rough storyboards which required me to switch the format of my photography to 35 mm colour slides, a major change from the years of black and white work with the Hasselblad.
Colour was exciting to work with, however, the mounting process was lengthy. Glass mounts and masks had to be prepared for each image. Most of these productions were experimental, with nude montages, often to be dismantled after viewing only a few times.  It was pure fun and an excellent exercise in creativity.  Sound, colour, motion, all added a magic dimension to the human figure.  Furthermore these exercises helped me to apply the experimental techniques of multi-media production to museums that we were designing at the time, “sans le nude” obviously!

the 80’s...a vast collection of color montages where produced for the multi media presentations , for example, a 4 minutes show could require up to 200 slides...

the 80’s...adapting the "sandwich" techniques used for multi media, the montages became less elaborate, sometimes with even more impact than the complex 3 or 4 enlargers "productions".

the 80’s... hard to believe, this was the last decade, after 30 years, to have montages done with the silver image in the confines of the dark room!

the 1990’s

This was a great decade for me, I was able to devote more time to photography and work with some excellent models. It was also the very beginning of the greatest  technological revolution that introduced new means of reproducing images, digital photography, changing forever the manipulation of the silver images.  Impassioned by photomontage for four decades, the use of the digital darkroom revolutionized the process. However, the many years of doing it the “hard way” has remained an invaluable experience to supplement the new technology. The transition to digital image processing was not easy at first and transferring, even a small portion of my photo library to digital became  a lengthy process ambushed many a time by my lack of knowledge.
On the world stage, this is the decade where fashion’s “top models” take the limelight, and go nude for the camera.  Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Laeticia Costa, Helena Christensen to name a few, and also “our own Canadians”, Estella Warren, and of different “top” fame, Pamela Anderson, originally from close to home on Vancouver Island.  All barriers are broken.  The best of these top models are now showing themselves in all their beauty through the lenses of many great photographers.  Again, Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Patrick Demarchelier, Dominique Isserman, and many, many more work with the nude figure.  But, in spite of the sensationalism and shock value to show the bare body of top fashion models, few had little artistic merit. By contrast, far away from slender fashion models, in a class of its own, the unique world of Jan Saudek won well deserved notoriety for his unique approach, style, colour, humour, and the absolute simplicity of his studio backgrounds.
This is also the decade of the greatest revolution in communications, the internet, where the flood gates burst open providing an unprecedented marketplace for nude photography, and, along with it, soft core and pornography:  “the good, the bad, and the ugly”.

the 90’s...the biggest changes yet, Hasselblad and Nikons 35 are used less and less, the transition to digital photography is taking place...

the 90’s... the last of the silver images...

the 90’s... the greatest break through of all, the "digital" darkroom! opening possibilities in photomontages, simply impossible to achieve "the old way"...

the new Millennium

A start with a bang into the new millennium !
Great changes are taking place. Digital photography is now taking over of the silver image. In less than the first five years of 2000, film manufacturers are closing their doors. Floods of digital cameras invade the market place, and so does nude photography. Digital photography and the computer programs associated with it are an absolute revolution in image making.

the year 2000...a celebration to new technology !...

The internet and the communication web it has created open the doors to many unknown photographers from every part of the globe, at least not accessible before. This of course is a great opportunity to all. First it provides exposure, communications and contact with fellow photographers sharing the same interests. The internet also opened up a multitude of  “ virtual “ galleries  where imagination and talent flourish. On the other hand it also, sadly, opened the doors to a flood of soft core and pornography far beyond what was already displayed in the news stands decades earlier.

the year 2001...if you can imagine it you can create it !...

Another revolution is the change in the human figure itself.
The ideal "classic" female body is, in my view, becoming an endangered species. Men and Women have chosen to alter, even mutilate their bodies to various degrees. Tattooing is a first example. While some tattoos are discreet personal signatures, others are invasive blotches impossible to cover up or even retouch. Another example is body piercing, here again from eyebrow to nose , lips , tongue, breast, navel etc….. And yet another change to the body is the shaving of pubic hairs. Gone is that triangle of mystery and sensuality. These  alterations, tattoos, piercing, and shaving have become a true trademark of our present society but create  a real handicap if the figure is to be represented as a timeless icon. Fortunately hair will grow back, piercing will heal, only the tattoos will remain as the mark of yet another passing fad.

the year 2002...a return to the classic black and white , and the redesign of my earlier book of photo montages "shadows and dreams"...

the year 2003...this is a time of great productivity, the preparation of a third book of photomontages... "woman"...plus a series of articles and a workshop for the German magazine Art Photo Akt.

the year 2004...more books in preparation, more articles then the search for a publisher begins...

the year 2005...new models, more travels, more images, more ideas...

the year 2006...among others, a series of images inspired by the research of Dr. J.P.Jourdan on "near death experiences".

The years 2007 and 2008 stand out as years without any sittings. We had sold our summer home of 12 years in Provence along with the best and largest studio I ever had. It was the end also of the great choice of models I had there.
This dry shooting spell was a good opportunity to do some major editing on the mass of work I had taken in France, and an inspiration for a new wave of montages. In the search for new approaches, I was able to experiment with duotone and polychrome effects in the new images.
The year 2009 was a return to painting in the first part of the year. It was a needed and welcome change from the computer. It helped formulate new ideas for upcoming montages. Also a major upgrade of my web site was planned and would keep me busy for a good period of time.
Planning ahead is fine but does not always happen as foreseen. On May 7th I was struck by a severe heart attack followed by pneumonia and further hospital complications. The major web upgrade had to wait!
As I was recovering in late August I lost my closest friend of 63 years. Georges was my harshest critique and had greatly helped in editing out many images. By year-end slowly, the creative juices were flowing again, and more montages took place.
2010 brought a fresh new beginning, thankful each day to still be alive. Plein air painting with close friends was an enjoyable change from planning and setting up photo sessions, but a major chapter was added to the site, a chronological presentation of my models from the Fifties to the present. No montages, straight images, for those who may prefer the simpler approach, but mostly to give the models a “Hall of Fame” and full credit for having shared over half a century the celebration of their being.
2011
I am now entering my 80th year with the pleasure of three new models to stir up inspiration and to add a fresh approach to my montages. Life is beautiful!
A personal note……
With all the technical possibilities at hand today, will the pendulum swing back to the celebration of beauty and creativity pure and simple or…will it fall deeper into an artificial world where models will become 3 D digital creations eliminating even further personality and soul! I hope not. To me, it is after all, inspiration, emotion, awe and appreciation for the model which has contributed to the evolution of what has become a very personal style. This is why I do photomontages. It permits me to recall past experiences, create new ones, search back into memories, and look forward into an imaginary future. And, if at times my “damsels in distress” are chained or tormented, I am here to rescue them, to take them back to that world of imagination where they belong, in their immortal youth and beauty, unspoiled by the present trends.

Jean Jacques André

http://jjandre-ca.com/index.php?/info/bio