Pete Voelker

from here's looking at you

Dan sent me a link to Pete's work and I just love this one.

you can see more of Pete's work here and here

Laura Noel

from Fiction

The photographs in this body of work are like the first sentence of a short story, only the ending can never be certain.

I pair images together to enhance the stories I sense in the emotional landscape around me. I fracture the story into diptychs so the line where the two images meet becomes the seam between fact and fiction, reality and longing, the universal and the personal.

The major theme running through Fiction is the struggle to be an individual in an increasingly homogeneous society, both in my own life and in the lives I imagine for others. Like a novel, there are several subplots and stories within stories.

you can see more of Laura's work here

Just Awesome

Stefani posted these on her wonderful world of schmeep

They are found photos that she made her own (quite beautifully and originally I might add)

you can see more of Stefani's work here

History Post

What could be simpler, after all, than the lateral pairing of images? (found here)



The oldest surviving consular diptych is one commissioned by Anicius Petronius Probus, consul in the western empire in 406. It is unique not only for its extreme antiquity but also as the only one to bear the portrait of the emperor (Honorius in this instance, to whom the diptych is dedicated in an inscription full of humility, with Probus calling himself the emperor's "famulus" or slave) rather than consul. (found here)



Definition: A painting consisting of two panels, traditionally hinged together. (found here)

A diptych is a sort of notebook, formed by the union of two tablets, placed one upon the other and united by rings or by a hinge. These tablets were made of wood, ivory, bone. or metal. Their inner surfaces had ordinarily a raised frame and were covered with wax, upon which characters were scratched by means of a stylus. Diptychs were known among the Greeks from the sixth century before Christ. They served as copy-books for the exercise of penmanship, for correspondence, and various other uses. The Roman military certificates, privilegia militum, were a kind of diptych. Between the two tablets others were sometimes inserted and the diptych would then be called a triptych, polyptych, etc. (found here)

and there is another Diptych blog! although I dont know how much it has in common with this one.

Karin Apollonia Muller

City Blues from Bunkerscapes


Wells Fargo from Bunkerscapes

“Bunkerscapes” is dealing with the space of Los Angeles downtown. In this series I create tryptics. I am interested in giving a sense of an existence of the world, in looking from one image to another, but I also wanted to suggest a fracturing and splintering off - of the world becoming fragmented and breaking apart.


Griffith from On Edge

In “Edges” I am interested in how the earth crumbles away and how in our desperate attempt we are trying to control or hide the subtle invasion of nature in cultivated space.

you can see more of Karin's work here

Nicole Belle

"Untitled" from her Apartment series

you can see more of Nicole's work here

(thanks Carmen)

Sharon Lockhart

Maja and Elodie, 2003
2 Chromogenic prints

Sharon Lockhart's eloquent, carefully composed still and moving pictures explore the conventions of film and photography, and the complex relationship between these two visual forms. Wide ranging in subject matter, the Los Angeles-based artist's work is characterized by narrative ambiguity, lush detail and an air of contemplative quietude. In some pieces, like the diptych Maja and Elodie (2003), she emphasizes the role of the observer by presenting two nearly identical photographs side by side, inviting viewers to consider not only the imagery at hand but also the pleasure and profundity of the act of looking at it. Drawing upon structural and documentary filmmaking traditions, Lockhart's art strikes a balance between intimacy and objectivity, addressing the nature of self-representation and anthropologic inquiry.

you can see more of Sharon's work here

Jennifer Cox

I just found Jennifer Cox on Flickr and I'm falling in love.


I lift my lids and all is born again


Black Magic


Be Brave!


Wild Horses

For me diptychs are mainly about telling a story, I have a film background and I tend to want to tell stories all the time... for me photographs are a way of trying to communicate something, to capture a certain feeling I wouldn't otherwise express... so using diptychs enables me to convey a narrative: by juxtaposing two images I force the viewer to make a connection between them, to try and find meaning in them and by doing so I ask them to invent a story to go with the images.

you can see more of Jennifer's work here

Desert Diptychs (+ triptychs)

I was in Joshua Tree last weekend and took a lot of photographs. This is what I've been playing around with so far...(more to come).

Carmen Winant

Disposable Diptychs: Carmen has been posting a few of these on her lovely blog. I especially like this one.



you can see more of Carmen's work here

Half Frame Cameras // Dan Abbe

I was just informed that there are toy cameras out there that are half frame and make diptychs IN CAMERA! Wow - major revelation for this blog...and me. Turns out there are a quite a few out there. For your learning and looking pleasure:

Golden Half

Olympus Pen EE

Yashica Samurai X4.0


Thanks to Dan Abbe for introducing me to this so I can share it right here on this blog. Here is one of his photos taken with the Golden Half.



you can see more of Dan's work here
you can learn more about half frame cameras here & here

35 Years

This is from a project I did in 2006 on my parents relationship. At the time I made these portraits they had been together for 35 years. I was looking at their relationship and trying to find a way to show how so much had happened while so much had remained the same.

David Hilliard

Ok, maybe not diptychs, but he's combining images in beautiful ways which is at the heart of what this blog is about.





you can see more of David's work here

Allan Sekula

This is one of my favorite diptychs.



From Allan Sekula's Titanic's Wake 1998/2000.
Portrait of the painter Lubov Khoudyakova in her studio, Novorossiysk
25 x 68 in. (diptych)

you can see more of Allan's work here

(safety) by Suzanne Goldish

The following diptychs are from a series called (safety). From the very beginning, I saw this project as a portrait project. The people in these photos take pills every day. They rely on these tiny, mysterious objects, hoping that they will relieve their suffering, make them healthier, help them sleep, or prevent disease. I took portraits of my subjects in and around their homes to try to express how personal this need is, how private the idea of illness and dependence on medication. But the pill is a main character in this relationship as well. The pill takes on incredible responsibility. The pill has a lot to live up to. So I created portraits of the pills as well. The resulting diptych pairs the two partners in this game. In a way, these two players are equals, two halves of a co-dependent relationship. But in another sense, the pill holds the power. Most people do not know how their medication functions, do not even know of what it consists. Yet they ingest it willingly, place their undying faith in the unknown world of medicine. And the pill has the upper hand. Sometimes it will help. Sometimes it will harm. Sometimes it will never let you go.





you can see more of Suzannes work here

Wikipedias answer to the diptych

A diptych (pronounced "dip-tick" IPA: [ dip'tik] (or US: [ 'dɪp.tɪk ]) from the Greek δίπτυχο [ ði'pti.xo ] di- "two" + ptychē "fold") is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. Devices of this form were quite popular in the ancient world, types existing for recording notes and for measuring time and direction. The term is also used figuratively for a thematically-linked sequence of two books.

It is in this form that the mention of "diptychs" in early Christian literature is found. The term often refers to official lists of the living and departed that are commemorated by the local church. The living would be inscribed on one wing of the diptych, and the departed on the other.


A diptych is also a type of icon whereby two panels are joined together with a hinge, so that they may fold together for protection when travelling, and then be unfolded for veneration when one's destination has been reached. Such diptychs are also called "travelling icons".
second thoughts: (I should have called this blog Travelling Icons)

The other form was a portable sundial:

interesting

Roscoe

Lucy

My first time

Hi There,

So, I was thinking about starting a blog for a while, but never got around to doing it, or coming up with a good framework for the blog. But today at lunch, I was talking with my friend Caitlyn about blogs in general and how inspiring they are etc., etc., and decided today would be the day I would start mine. When it came time to decide what my blog was going to be called, that was when I had to really make a decision, my least favorite thing to do. So, at first I thought I would make this blog devoted to a new portrait project I'm working on. Then I decided to make it primarily about diptychs since one, they are a part of my new project and two, diptychs are a new way of looking at images for me in my own photographic practice. So, here it is. A blog devoted to the diptych form. Welcome!