I’ve now started reading and looking at political montage. I’ve come across a chapter on the subject in Understanding a photograph by John Berger, which I have read a couple of times but will analyse in the next post.

As I’ve been looking at photomontage I thought I would give it a go and see of how it could be applied to the manifesto. So I took a page and then thought what to do next.

I decided to reverse the writing, except the part that was underlined, and I found that this created something that was sort of understandable but was mainly indecipherable. Certain letters work no matter what way they face, such as O or W or X, but the majority of letters we sort of recognisable but were difficult to understand. I really liked this effect as it seems to mirror the point that what politicians say is not always understandable and they don’t speak clearly very often. I’ve included the two examples below.

From there I then decided to add some imagery. I thought that the emphasis of the statement “we control your life” is all about power and so to reflect this I then decided to add a picture of a bank and then I found a picture of the prime minister, the chancellor and the secretary for the DWP. This represents probably the three most powerful people in the country and who have a massive influence over our lives.

So I then overlaid them on the page of the manifesto to see what they were like. I tried different sizes and positions and found that having the bank in the background and the men in the foreground was the best arrangement. I also turned the men to B&W instead of colour as this will add a more gritty feel to the image.

I then added in the background a grid of the phrase “Keep calm & carry on we’re all in this together” which is a phrase that the prime minister has used on various occasions.

Overall I think it is ok, it’s not a groundbreaking image and seems to be missing a level of cynicism and lacks creativity and imagination that can be prevalent in photomontage. But it is a start in a different direction to before and does go to show of what could be possible. I think that I am just playing it too safe and not pushing the boundaries yet.