Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann

                 Jerry Uelsmann is an American photographer.  From a young age, he began exploring photography, and found lots of potential within the developing process.  Uelsmann takes digital negatives, and combines them during development while in the darkroom to create images that would be impossible to take with a camera.  While creating these surrealistic images, Jerry Uelsmann masks off the pieces of the negatives that he wishes to use, and then enlarges them.  Often times, he will reuse pieces of images in different works.  Uelsmann shares his imagination with his audience through the unique combinations of images he creates. 

            I was inspired to research Jerry Uelsmann because I have worked with photo negatives in the past, and I know how stressful and difficult the developing process to me.  Since the negatives cannot be exposed to light, he must do all of his masking and combining in almost total darkness.  It is amazing to me that these images can come out looking this clean.  I would like to try similar projects.  However, I would start with digital photo combinations instead of darkroom combinations.  I also like Jerry Uelsmann’s way of sharing his imagination with the world, and that a photograph does not have to look exactly like the subject it was taken from.  Another thing about his artwork that I enjoy is that it is black and white.  Since color photography is so common, the contrast between black and white photography really stands out for me.