Jerry Uelsmann, the artist who turned photography upside down

By “breaking the rules” established by those who came before him, Uelsmann helped redefine what photography could be. In stark contrast to the purist ideals of the time, his work didn’t capture an external reality but expressed an internal vision. Using multiple enlargers (as many as seven) and countless negatives, he placed images on top of one another to create impossible montages, composed of many layers.

In the age of Photoshop, it’s easy to take for granted what Jerry Uelsmann did in the darkroom, but as Petersén explains, it was nothing short of revolutionary. The idea that a photograph could be therapeutic and capture the unseen, hidden contours of the human imagination—revealing our memories, fears, and desires—was both thrilling and unsettling. Similarly, the notion that a photograph could be made after the moment when the shutter was released—e.g. in the darkroom—felt liberating.