Martina Lopez

Starting to think about how I can use these old photos within my work.... I started to look at artists whom recycle photos to use in their own work.

"Lopez began working with her family's photographs as a way of reconstructing memories and exploring feelings of loss and change. From this series she created works dedicated to her father, mother, and her eldest brother who was killed in Vietnam when she was four years old. The artist remarked that many of the memories of her oldest brother were in part constructed from his presence in family photographs. Working with snapshots from family vacations Lopez began to stitch together new images of her family that would exist in an artificial space of her own creation outside of a specific moment in time. Of this Lopez writes, "By extracting people from their original context and then placing them into fabricated landscapes, I hope to retell a story of their being, one which allows the images to acquire a life of their own. While the pieces from photographs verify an actual lived experience, the landscape stands as my metaphor for life, demarcating its quality, where the horizon suggests an endless time."

Though usually I really don't like photomontages, I must say I think these are beautiful! Its also really interesting how Lopez uses these monochromatic portraits against such colourful backgrounds that don't have any direct relevance to each other. It really makes the figures 'pop' out, and it's apparent that they have been carefully placed and sized correctly in the image.