November 28, 1983
David Hockney English, born 1937
England
David Hockney began making photographs in 1970, temporarily abandoning his primary medium of painting to explore the possibilities of what he called joiners, composite images made with multiple photographic prints. His joiners aim to get “closer to the way that we actually look at things, closer to the truth of experience.” They eschew the single-point perspective of a traditional photograph in favor of an image containing an accumulation of individual perspectives. Depicting the artist in bed—in the act of taking his own image in the facing mirror, surrounded by newspapers and brochures, cigarettes, and the furnishings of his hotel room—this self-portrait shows his morning as a duration instead of a single moment in time.
Photocollage (chromogenic prints)