Photomontage "Of Light and Bon"

This photomontage is called, “Of Light and Bon”.

I chose to use a set of photos all taken within approximately 5-10 seconds of each other. Scott Bunter, a local professional photographer, took the photos.  The photos are of my dog. Well, actually she was my dog, and that is precisely why I chose these pictures to represent her. She passed away on August 21, 2014. The photos were taken for my nineteenth birthday as a gift from my parents in October of 2013. My parents knew how much she was my dog, and how much I loved to see her enjoying life in her yard. It was her natural habitat.

The composition of this piece is not an accident. I decided to make the start in the top left of the canvas. Bonnie is facing to the left and turning to walk toward the photographer. For the purposes of this piece, I wanted to have Bonnie notice her family and walk toward them. Then I wanted her to walk forward as she always did. I placed the pictures at a diagonal cascading toward the bottom right of the canvas to show the pattern in which she walked. In her old age she rarely walked in a straight line.

Most importantly, and the most obvious element of this work is the opacity of the pictures. Because each picture was so flooded with natural light and a bright green background, it was easy to carry the opacity throughout each picture and capture Bonnie’s movement. She also stood out because she was a German shepherd mix, and her black back in contrast with her tan tail, belly, and face, stood out wonderfully. The first pictures are opaque at a level that makes Bonnie seem like she is just coming into the photo and traveling directly out of the light. Then she gets closer to being reunited with her family, is easier to see, and looks more realistic. As she moves closer and closer however, she remains out of reach because she is in fact, no loner in this world. This fact is represented with the opacity of the last pictures of her becoming lighter and lighter in opacity.

There is an abundance of negative space that I left white as a representation of Bonnie’s purity. She only knew how to love and never lied or caused trouble on purpose, unlike humans. Dogs in general are this way; dogs are pure and only mistaken as hateful when they are scared. Therefore, there is white space to depict her innocence. She had also passed when I made this photomontage, so in representation of the beautiful and pure place that I hope she resides within now, I left rich amounts of white space on either side of the photos.