![The Victorian photocollages, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were the private art projects of wealthy women, who used carte de visite photographs to assemble their compositions. I guess the modern equivalent would fall somewhere between scrapbooking and, say, mucking about in Photoshop with your family’s vacation photos.
The images from the various albums in the collection range from the whimsical to the vaguely absurd, though none veer anywhere near to Darger-esque creepiness, nor the trippiness of Terry Gilliam’s collage animations.
What is so great about this exhibit is that these albums were not originally for public consumption, so they expose another aspect of the outer life/inner life, the public/private dichotomy of that very staid society. (Of course if you were poor you were less interested in gluing a photo of your kid’s head onto a drawing of a turtle than trying to earn enough to feed your family or stay out of debtor’s prison, but still.) I like imagining these well-born (or well-married) Victorian ladies, likely tittering to themselves as they assembled these cut-up pictures on the delicate, spidery watercolor backgrounds, inserting their family and friends into the odd, or fanciful, or wacky (for them) settings.
[Pictured: Untitled page from the Sackville-West Album]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxlq72fLLw1qz84nko1_500.jpg)
The Victorian photocollages, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were the private art projects of wealthy women, who used carte de visite photographs to assemble their compositions. I guess the modern equivalent would fall somewhere between scrapbooking and, say, mucking about in Photoshop with your family’s vacation photos.
The images from the various albums in the collection range from the whimsical to the vaguely absurd, though none veer anywhere near to Darger-esque creepiness, nor the trippiness of Terry Gilliam’s collage animations.
What is so great about this exhibit is that these albums were not originally for public consumption, so they expose another aspect of the outer life/inner life, the public/private dichotomy of that very staid society. (Of course if you were poor you were less interested in gluing a photo of your kid’s head onto a drawing of a turtle than trying to earn enough to feed your family or stay out of debtor’s prison, but still.) I like imagining these well-born (or well-married) Victorian ladies, likely tittering to themselves as they assembled these cut-up pictures on the delicate, spidery watercolor backgrounds, inserting their family and friends into the odd, or fanciful, or wacky (for them) settings.
[Pictured: Untitled page from the Sackville-West Album]
