Christopher Howse

Floating bodies, seeing hands, rippling skies – is Jerry Uelsmann’s photomontage a tragic dead-end?

A review of Uelsmann Untitled: A Retrospective, by Jerry N. Uelsmann. There's no denying that these strange images are part of a venerable tradition – or that a teenager with Photoshop could have done it quicker

‘Flying Rock’ [reprinted with permission from the university press of florida] 
issue 30 August 2014
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  • Uelsmann Untitled: A Retrospective

    Jerry Uelsmann, with an introduction by Carol McCusker

    University Press of Florida, pp. 266

An untitled photograph by Jerry Uelsmann from 1991 shows a rock like Magritte’s floating in the sky between an Ansel Adams mountainside of conifers on one side and a bare mountain on the other; concentric ripples on a lake in the foreground are mirrored in the sky above. It will, I fear, remind readers of that BBC2 ident with Zen-ish sky-ripples.

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