Montage (pronounced mon-tahzh (mawn-tazh in French))
(1)
The technique of combining in a single composition, pictorial elements from
various sources, as parts of different photographs or fragments of printing,
either to give the illusion that the elements belonged together originally or
to allow each element to retain its separate identity as a means of adding
interest or meaning to the composition; the composition itself.
(2)
By analogy, the creation of a thing or concept by combining a number of related
elements; any combination of disparate elements that forms or is felt to form a
unified whole.
(3)
In photography, as photomontage, a juxtaposition or partial superimposition of
several shots to form a single image.
(4) In film & television etc, a technique of editing used to present an idea or set of interconnected ideas.
1929: A borrowing from the French montage (assembly, set-up), the construct being mont(er) (to mount; to put up) + -age. Monter was from the Vulgar Latin montāre, the present active infinitive of monto (to climb, mount, go up), from mōns & montem (mountain), from the primitive Indo-European men- (mountain). The suffix -age was from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum. Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj. It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure. The French suffix -age was from the Middle & Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum, (greatly) extended from words like rivage and voyage. It was used usually to form nouns with the sense of (1) "action or result of Xing" or (more rarely), "action related to X" or (2) "state of being (a or an) X". A less common use was the formation of collective nouns. Historically, there were many applications (family relationships, locations et al) but use has long tended to be restricted to the sense of "action of Xing". Many older terms now have little to no connection with their most common modern uses, something particularly notable of those descended from actual Latin words (fromage, voyage et al).
Montage, although now most associated with photography, painting and
other static installations, was originally a term in cinematography, first
attested in 1929. The use was extended
in 1931 (as photomontage) to the use of photographs or photographic negatives
to make art or illustrations. The
technique can, in many fields, be used to add a veneer of intellectual gloss to
what is really an elaborated form of plagiarism. More helpfully, photomontages have been a
vital aspect of the techniques of producing large scale imagery and the first
were literally assembled on large tables by technicians armed with scissors, magnifying
glasses and adhesive tape, the most prolific of the early adopters being the
military who used the small images taken during photo-reconnaissance (PR) missions. As camera technology improved, definition increased
and more detail was captured but this was counted somewhat by increased
anti-surveillance measures which forced the PR missions to operate at higher
altitude. Interestingly, the Allied
military in World War II (1939-1945) found women much more efficient in both
analysing PR and assembling montages.
The
techniques honed in wartime proved valuable in peacetime for creating
large-scale maps and renderings from sometimes even thousands of small
fragments. This was the way big areas on
the surface of the earth were able to be visualized as if a single photograph
and in the 1950s work began on the task of mapping the ocean floor, something
of interest not only oceanographers & nautical geographers but also to navies,
commercial shipping companies and miners, the oil & gas industry long aware
that vast untapped resources lay under the waves. The concept of mapping the seabed is simple
in that all that is required is to have the images in the form of a grid which
could then be assembled in a single montage (the world’s biggest). However, while the scale in terms of the
surface area proved manageable, obtaining the data at depths in which pressures
are immense and darkness total proved as challenging as predicted and although
the maps are in a sense complete, the deepest parts of the oceans remain to
some extent mysterious. The available
montages (which scientists call bathymetric data sets) include the GEBCO
(General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans which is an international project), Seabed
2030 (a collaborative project between GEBCO and the Japanese Nippon Foundation
which plans to have a comprehensive map of the entire ocean floor by 2030), the
EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network which publishes highly
detailed bathymetric maps for European waters) and the US NOAA (National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which offers maps of US waters and
contributes to global programmes, their material available through the National
Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
The
difference between collage and montage is that while a collage weaves together
things of difference to create a unified whole, a montage uses complete things
of some similarity to create something visually coherent although, with some
modern artists, coherence can prove elusive, however cohesive a whole the glue
might produce. At the definitional margins
however, the distinctions can be significant in the production but be undetectable
in the result. To create what appeared
to be the montage of the seabed, what was done was technically a collage, the
assembled components including photographs, renderings from ship-based sonar
measurements and satellite altimetry as well as some enhancement in software. However big might have been the ambition to
create a unified montage of the ocean floor, cosmologists & astronomers
thought bigger still and as space-based cameras and wandering craft became
available, montages were assemble of objects such as the moon and the lovely
rings of Saturn. Aiming to produce the
grandest montage of all is the European Space Agency which (ESA), using observations
from their Euclid space mission (launched in July 2023) will explore dark
matter and dark energy; over time billions of galaxies will be viewed. What makes Euclid different from the Hubble Telescope
and JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) is it can survey large parts of the sky
at once, the agency describing the difference as between looking through a
window compared with a keyhole. In time,
all the known objects in the universe might be photographed which will permit
quite a montage but what really interests the cosmologists is the dark matter
(which may actually be dark energy or a combination of the two) so it’s a quest
for the known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
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