Researching - Paul Citroen. ( Manipulated Images )

Paul Citroen was born in 1896. He was a German born artist, art educator and co-founder of Art Academy in Amsterdam. He grew up in a middle class family in Berlin and started drawing whilst young. He then started experimenting with photography with Erwin Blumenfeld.

In 1919, he studied at te Bauhaus, taking lessons from the likes of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Johannens Itten. These people had a big influence upon him. In 1923 he started his major work 'Metropolis'. This work influenced Fritz Lang to make his classic film 'Metropolis'. Citroen realised that by putting photos of buildings altogether it would look like a city.

He started up the Nieuwe Kunstschool (it means new art school), with Charles Roelofsz but it closed down in 1937. He soon became a Scholar at the Royal Academy of Art in Hague. Portraits were his main theme.

Photographically he had a loose natural style often ignoring many of the tenets of photography and doing his own thing. For instance he would use his camera out of focus.

Paul Citroen died in 1983 in Wassenaar.

Metropolis - Paul Citroen 1923

This picture is a montage of similar pictures pasted together and giving the effect of a large Metropolis hence the title of the piece. The one that I have chosen is in shades of Greys and Ochre. It is a very busy picture and one that would stand to be looked at for a while. It is full of the life found in a city with plenty of bustle and noise. Although this picture has not been digitally manipulated it has been changed in that it is almost a collage of pictures so that the individual pictures are real but together they make up a manipulated image. Citroen was more of a painter than a photgrapher and it is his artistic eye that makes this picture come alive. The reason that I like this picture is that although it was made in 1923 it is still valid as a city today. It looks strong and Modern. I would be interested to use this method using trees.