Political Photomontage

Throughout this course, I've always had the urge to have an underlying message inside my design, when I read this exercise I was honestly excited. It was all to do with creating a photomontage with a political message. There is a lot of things I'm passionate about in this world and this was a perfect opportunity for me to express those ideas.

Almost instantly I knew that I wanted to create a piece on the war in Syria and how it affects the innocent lives of children. After I had a focus I made a list on my laptop of potential ideas and methods of expressing this.

Photomontage ideas

Putin sat on throne infant of destroyed city

Dead birds (chemical strike)

Man holding child

Some have nothing, lost in space

Aid packages have bombs in

Refugees are demons

Now the first Idea I had was to involve Putin, he is a massive player in the Syrian conflict, and is funding president Asaad's regime. Now I know there is a fine line between the 'good' guys and 'bad' guys in Syria but the fact that the lives of innocent children are at risk is completely barbaric. The pain and suffering endured by these children is unimaginable. However, when they try to seek a better life there are far-right groups trying to stop them by demonizing and dehumanizing them. They have become Trapped.

With that In mind, I began sketching, I wanted to try and get as much down as possible before continuing on the computer. The way I went about it was to compile as many different small elements I could include. This is because I already knew the main concept of the photomontage and that was to express the 'Pain and suffering of Syrian children". Now there are many different ways of going about this, so having the sketches down was important as it gave me the elements I needed when entering photoshop. For example, I had the idea of having an ISIS fighter as an animal, I researched about cowardly animals and didn't really find anything as merciless and savage so I chose a different route, I combined the wings of a Tarantula Hawk with the body of a fire ant, my thought behind it was that both insects are deadly however can be squished and killed easily. Just having that sketch on paper meant that my idea was solidified and whilst creating the final piece in photoshop I had these separate ideas to look back on.

Final Piece

Here is my final work. I feel that it conveys the message well and after feedback from my parents and friends, it is very impactful. I have tried to only add imagery to the montage that is necessary nothing in the montage doesn't have a reason to be there.

The Children: These children are refugees from Syria, the first thing I adjusted was the saturation of the colours and made more minor adjustments to give the feel of vintage printing, rather like the vintage propaganda posters of WW2 ( I will go into further detail about the similarities between WW2 propaganda and the anti-refugee propaganda of today, it also unintentionally makes the children appear less human. I've then tried to visualise the words 'dehumanise and demonise', one little boy has his eyes covered because this is the part of the body that can show the most emotion and by covering this take this away, showing emotion is a big part of what makes us human. The little boy in the middle has devil horns, far right media likes to post videos and make hateful speeches about how violent and horrid Syrian refugees are, their main goal is to demonise them to the public to further convey their message of hate. The main goal of the devil horns is to expose this bigoted profiling. All of this demonising is just stopping these innocent children from seeking a better life because apparently, they are evil. The hand above the girl is taken directly from an anti-Jew propaganda poster I found in my old history book, history is repeating itself, all be it on a smaller scale. Just like the Nazi's demonised Jewish people, there is a clear familiarity between the language and imagery used to vilify Syrian people. Lastly, I’ve added a gas mask to a boy, there is something that is just horrifying to see a child in a gas mask. Young children should be nurtured and kept safe, not exposed to chlorine attacks like these Syrian children, it also evokes the contrast between the lives western children live compared to these children and how we should take nothing for granted.

Trump and Putin: Trump and Putin were 2 people I wanted to include in this montage. Putin because he is the main backer of the regime and however you look at the Syrian conflict he is a key supplier of weapons to a regime that routinely bombs civilians in Ghouta, it just goes to show how dangerous and greedy Putin really is. Donald Trump, because of his continuous spread of xenophobia and hate through his social media, one of the things that stand out was his retweeting of the far-right group called Britain First. Both of these men have parts of a skull on their faces, this is because the skull symbolises the grim reaper and both of them a perpetuating death and hate on the children of Syria, I've also changed the background of Trump and Putin to show how disconnected they are from Syria, the background is also clouded because their 'heads are in the clouds' if they think what they are doing is right.

The ISIS fighter: It is the stranger element of this montage, I’ve taken the head of an ISIS fighter and put it on the body of a fire ant. There is also the wings of a Tarantula Hawk. I already explained my reasoning for this but to clarify it is because although these insects are quite deadly they can be easily crushed and destroyed like vermin.

There are a few other more literal features of the montage. The inclusion of the ISIS flag to ensure that the viewer understands that this is an ISIS member. I've also included a jet dropping chemical bombs. The word Trapped is also in a box so it is literally trapped. I've also replicated the effect on text when it is highlighted in photoshop with this blue box to quite literally highlight the issue.