Lecture Class: Photomontage vs Digital Collage

As we progressed on with the class, a question remained: what's the difference between photomontage and digital collage? Despite the similarity of presentation, there is undoubtedly certain factors that set them apart:

Digital Montage vs Photomontage

• The fragments combined in a digital collage retain a separate visual identity. They have edges, often torn or jagged and usually cutting across the shapes both of the piece in its original, uncut state and across other pieces in the composition.
•  The fundamental compositional relation is juxtaposition in digital collage, and  merging/emergence in photomontage. 
• The space of a digital collage is very abstract, rarely that of a representational frame, whereas in photomontage, the blending images somehow inhabit a single world.

Hence we set out on a journey in groups to search the good collage/montage examples out there in the cyber world:


1) http://www.nfctd.com/home.html

This website presents an interesting juxtaposition of images, times, technologies and artistic visions. It takes digital collage further, incorporating interactive elements (flash interactive) in the artwork. Together with sound and interactivity, the result is stunning. Artist Caleb Johnston detailed engravings of people, plants, animals, anatomical diagrams and decorative letterforms and make them animate, morph, and dissolve into one another in novel ways.


It does require a bit of perseverance to get some of the screens to “complete” and move on to the next one, especially if you are impatient and your internet loads slowly.

The gallery is interactive in that it depends on you move your mouse around to find “hot spots” within each image, and click on them to trigger animated sequences. Click, or re-click, on enough of them in a given image and you will trigger a progression to the next collage in the sequence.

2) http://www.christophegilbert.com/index_high.html

Thanks to my classmate, Shane, I get a chance to view the works of a wonderful artist. The photoshop skills displayed here are simply jaw dropping. The works done by digital artist Christopher Gilbert are absolutely brilliant in creativity, content and color. 

Some are thought-provoking, some are wierd, others are ingenious. Overall, it's just wonderful.

3. http://www.maggietaylor.com/

The images were first spotted in the US drama series, Ghost Whisperer, as the opening theme. My classmate Melissa shared with me how fascinated she felt seeing how interactivity merges with still pictures. The website features what Maggie Talylor describes as pictures with a more muted “1940s”.

These images were done by combining and recombining scans and photographs in photographic still-life collages, a personal style she developed while earning her master’s degree.

Very wonderful indeed.