I chose to look at the images in the Cottingley Fairies series, specifically “Frances and the Fairies”. This series was created by two young sisters to try to fool the viewer into believing in fairies and gnomes. Although today these images are obviously fake, at the time they created a large debate on whether the images really captured fairies. The composition of the piece is what I think made it so believable. Having Frances behind the images of the fairies, creates the illusion that she is looking in on this fairy gathering. It also is very strong as it allows Frances to appear much larger than the fairies, as she would be, while capturing the fairies on a larger scale as well.
I love the idea of these images of combining reality with the “mystical” and would love to somehow do that within my montage.
Fantastic Photomontage and Its Possible Influences, 1857 – 2007 : a Timeline, www.d-log.info/timeline/index.html.