Joiners & David Hockney

Joiners are images made up of many smaller photographs, overlapping and interjoining almost like a puzzle.

Generally they will be multiple photographs of one subject, each photograph showing only a section of the subject and each subsequent photograph partly showing a previous photographs area.

In the example above you can see how each subsequent photograph shows part of the previous. This makes combining them later infinitely easier.

A good way to take joiners is to stand looking towards your subject and take a photo, take a step to the side and take another, continue this until you have completely covered the area horizontally. Next move your view down one frame (By which I mean the area you can see through the camera’s viewfinder) and again move horizontally, this time in the opposite direction. Continue this grid pattern untill you have covered your entire subject.

Another way you could do it would be to stand in one place and turn your view left and right rather than taking steps, this makes for an entirely different effect, rather than having a very large image of one angle, you would get a shifting angle much like the photo David Hockney took of his mother.

What’s interesting about this photomontage is that, as Hockney was standing in the one position, the perspective changes as your eyes follow the photo downward. Almost giving the impression you’re right there and you yourself have just looked down at your feet.

I used the first method mainly for my joiners, both at college and at home. At college I used a small compact digital camera and at home I used my new DSLR (Canon EOS 550d). In both instances I had to keep in mind my overall image and ,unless this was a desired effect:

• I had to ensure that nothing changed in my overall image area
• I needed to ensure lighting and shadows were the same throughout my photos
• The focus needed to be the correct for each shot
• Having the exposure the same was important so that the photos matched each other
• I needed to ensure that I had every photo, if I missed even one section the entire joiner could be ruined.

I imagine doing  joiner photography is made considerably easier since the introduction of digital photography, considering that you can review your photos on the spot as well as assembling them digitally. I would hate to take a series of photographs on film for a joiner, only to find an integral photo was out of focus, shaky, etc. The cost would also be considerably more.

Once the separate photos are all taken then they can be combined, either digitally or physically ie: Photoshop or printing and combining.  The photos are placed one atop another overlapping, combining the separate photos into one image, by lining up the content.

There are many reasons to use joiners over standard photography ranging from the fact that you can display a movement of time, you can get very wide photo’s without the use of a wide-angle lens and even just the fact that they have a unique and interesting flair.

The name “Joiner” was coined by British artist David Hockney.

David Hockney is an internationally famous painter, set designer and photographer who has used mediums from countless kinds of traditional art supplies to photographs used in imaginative and unique ways, to computer technology and the iPhone. He was born on the 9th of July, 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire. His parents were Kenneth and Laura Hockney. He had four siblings: his two older brothers Paul and Phillip, his older sister Margaret and his little brother, John.

Hockney went through several schools of art in his life from the Bradford School of Art to the Royal College of Art in London and started to become a celebrated artist. Painting many of his famous pieces, such as “A Bigger Splash” and “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy”, before moving on to joiners.

Pictured Above: “A Bigger Splash” possibly David Hockney’s most famous painting. Something I find interesting is that: In a painting, which is a moving flowing process, Hockney concentrated on getting the splash perfect, on freezing that very moment in time. However in his photography work, which normally is a quick process that captures that very instant and does literally freeze it in time, he focused on displaying a movement of time and a flowing process.

In 1967 Hockney bought a 35mm film camera for taking reference photos and in 1970 made his first joiner. He had apparently been unhappy with the amount of photographers using wide-angle lenses at the time, unsatisfied with the distortion they created and how the photos were not true to human vision. It is said that he stumbled on to joiners by accident when preparing to paint a terrace he took several Polaroids and set them next to each other, he found this created a “Narrative” as if you were walking from one image to another.

Pictured Above: An early David Hockney Joiner.

After the creation of his first joiner Hockney began making more and more photocollages of all different sorts including; from a fixed position moving his view, moving all around taking photos at different levels, photos all from the same angle, photos from multiple angles, photos laid out in a perfect grid pattern or completely jumbled and many more.

On the 11th of April 1986 David Hockney starts what will be his most famous joiner yet, Pearblossom Highway (pictured below), and would not finish it until the 18th. Hockney stated in an interview held by The Tate art gallery’s Twitter “Tateshots” that “It looks as though it’s a view from one point, but not one of the photographs was taken from that view point. I moved everywhere and in every direction, but I had to start piecing it together while I was out there, otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to take next.”

This is an example of what I refered to as “The grid method” of moving around and taking photos at different areas but facing the same angle the whole time. This is what I did in the majority of my photographs.

Pictured Above: An example by David Hockney of a joiner in which the photos are taken from multiple different angles.

Pictured Above: An example of a joiner which, rather than overlapping, is arranged in an angular uniform manner

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