Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

Chapter 4. Studio 04: The workshop

Hristophe NoËl

This image was part of a project I did for an exhibit arranged by the Seine-Saint-Denis regional council on the theme of "Memories of the Industrial Age." It couldn't be just "a beautiful picture." It also had to embody a concept, a thought addressed to both the author and to the viewer. Thanks to digital retouching with Photoshop, everything is possible.

For this particular setting, I created multiple images of myself as a way of raising the question of identity in a world dominated by mass production, and how it has led us to prefer identical copies instead of unique objects—even when it comes to humans! I used a common workplace scene—in this case, a workshop—where each identical character is engrossed in his own inner world.

Hardware used

• Sinar 4 × 5 view camera

• Balloon light, without flash

• 4 × 5 Polaroid and Portra 160NC sheet film

• 500 MHz Power Mac G4 with 512 MB RAM

• Wacom graphic tablet

• Imacon virtual drum scanner

Software used

• Photoshop 7

Montage and digital retouching are an important part of my work, but only as an adjunct. I try to avoid letting them become the main subject, like one of those movies where special effects start to dominate the story.

For The Workshop, I wanted to produce a realistic pictorial rendering that, if cleverly done, might fool the viewer. It called for a warm, enclosed space, and a format like that of the great frescoes of the 18th century. I looked through many books, was appalled by the photographs ...