As I was walking in the streets of Athens near the area of Exarcheia, a wonderful idea came to my mind just by looking the layers upon layers of half torn posters on the walls. I suddenly realised that I could photograph interesting accidental collages from the different overlapping and torn posters already posted on the walls.
But of course I soon found out, to my disappointment, that the idea was far from original having been first thought of by André Breton’s Surrealist group in the 1930s. I later on looked in the net and discovered a very interesting article written by Rick Poynor in the internet Eye Magazine from 2001 called "Surface Wreckage". Here is an extract from this article:
" ... The idea that mangled street posters might be physically appropriated for artistic purposes is attributed to Léo Malet, a French poet, who was briefly a member of André Breton’s Surrealist group. In the mid-1930s, observing the processes by which pristine printed images were transformed, Malet proposed a new form of Surrealist street poetry shaped by chance. “Soon,” he wrote, “collage will be executed without scissors, without a razor, without paste . . . Abandoning the artist’s table and his pasteboard, it will take its place on the walls of the city, the unlimited field of poetic realisations.” Commercial artists would supply the raw materials and passing pedestrians, aided by wind and rain, would intervene to unlock new meanings never intended by the designers, as fragments of earlier images, hidden below the top poster, were once again exposed to view... "
Anyway, for what it's worth, here is my attempt at the art of the accidental collage...
The above mentioned article can be found here:
http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=17&fid=122
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