We’ve seen a number of photomanipulations before, but most of them reimagine the world as we know it. Artist Jane Long is more interested in reimagining the past, turning the posed, black-and-white photos of the mid-century into colorful and dreamlike images.
Using photos from an archive in Romania, Long turns them into imaginative, surreal scenes. She calls the series Dancing With Costica.
The photos were taken in the mid-20th century by a photographer named Costica Acsinte, a war veteran who, after coming home from a tour, opened a photography shop. Today, his work is collected and digitized in the Costica Acsinte Archive in Romania, which means that Long can access it all the way from her home in Australia. While she’ll never meet Acsinte, she views this project as something of a collaboration with restorer and archivist Cezar Popescu.
In contrast to her bright and dreamy creations, the original photos look stiff, maybe even joyless. But that was just the photographic convention of the time, Long says. These photos were taken before smiling in a photo was common practice.
“I wanted to change the context of the images,” she explains. “Photographic practices at the time meant people rarely smiled in photos but that doesn’t mean they didn’t laugh and love. I wanted to introduce that to the images.”
By adding a new setting and fantastical details, Long celebrates the lives of these people from the past.
Sometimes, the changes aren’t even that surreal, but they lend a magical quality to the photos anyway.
“I wanted people to see these figures as real people, more than just an old photograph. Adding colour completely changes our perception of images,” Long says. It should be noted that she is not altering the actual, physical photos, which are housed in Romania, but rather altering digital copies of them.
As far as the meanings behind the images, Long says that’s up to the viewer.
Some people have objected to the fact that Long is manipulating the photos of people she does not know. For Long, not knowing them makes it easier to create something truly organic and original, rather than something that might be influenced by information about the person.
“I will probably never know the real stories of these people, but in my mind, they became characters in tales of my own invention.” Long says, “Star crossed lovers, a girl waiting for her lover to come home, boys sharing a fantasy, innocent children with a little hint of something dark.”
She sometimes even combines multiple photos into one image.
(via Colossal)
You can see more of Jane Long’s artwork on her website, as well as on Facebook. If you like historical photos, be sure to check out the Costica Acsinte Archive.
