Examples of "Joiners"

In the early 1980s, Hockney began to produce photocollages, which he called "joiners," first using Polaroid prints and subsequently 35mm, commercially-processed color prints. Using Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject, Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image.An early photomontage was of his mother. Because the photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work that has an affinity with Cubism, one of Hockney's major aims—discussing the way human vision works. Some pieces are landscapes, such as Pearblossom Highway #2, others portraits, such as Kasmin 1982,and My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.

Between 1970 and 1986, he created photomontages, calling them joiners. He began this style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout. The subject moved while being photographed, so that the pieces show the movements of the subject from the camera's perspective. In later works, Hockney changed the technique, moving the camera around the subject.

Creation of the "joiners" occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses. He did not like these photographs because they looked somewhat distorted. While working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles, he took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. On looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative, as if the viewer moved through the room. He began to work more with photography after this discovery and stopped painting for a while to exclusively pursue this new technique. Frustrated with the limitations of photography and its 'one eyed' approach, however, he returned to painting.