Exercise: Photomontage

After reading the brief for this exercise I started to think about all the big events that have taken place this year. We are currently living in some unprecedented times. At the start of the year everybody was worried about a potential world war 3, then in mid march the whole country and pretty much the whole world went into lockdown, then in May we witnessed the killing of George Floyd which re-ignited the debate about the treatment of black people by the police.

As I started to think which option I could use to collate with my brief I came to the thought that the image of the killing of George Floyd could be used to create a powerful photomontage with meaning. This very image has become the center of debate about racism and the symbol of the untreatment of black people by the police.

Mind map

• 

You never know which idea can pop up by looking at a word which is why I decided to create a mind map.

I then went on to explore photomontages based on racism, I came across a lot of montages which are inappropriate and very uncomfortable to look at, but to broaden my knowledge on the subject I saved the images even though I disagree with the meaning of some of the pictures.

Mood board

• 

Design issues

I had a brainstorm Idea which really excited me, I wanted to use the picture of officer Dereck Chauvin ramming his knee into a symbol of racism, this idea would have been a very good juxtaposition with a interesting new meaning. But when I tried to recreate the image using already existing pictures the idea just didn’t seem to take off.

Collage

I created a collage using images of examples of excessive force used by the police on black people, I used some very hard hitting images with a strong message.

Final design

• 

I merged two very contrasting images and turned them into one. One carrying images of extreme police brutality and the other image representing love.

Final overview

I was disappointed in myself for not being able to bring my original idea into innovation, but at the end I was somewhat satisfied for being able to create a cover and using juxtaposition in the process for something I feel passionate about.