Artist and Yorkshireman David Hockney started to shoot multiple instant photographs of a scene, placing them back together to create one picture in the late 1970's. Later switching away from the expensive Polaroid format and using 35mm film and relatively cheap small prints. These slotted together in just the same way in an attempt to create a feeling of direct involvement in the scene. As the series of pictures would somehow draw the viewer in. This may have been partially to do with the viewpoint perspective of the images as well as the way the eye works. Looking for detail in the different frames and taking clues as to whether they match or not. 

I started to use this technique in the late 1990s when I was working for several skateboard magazines. In order to try and ‘escape the page’ or perhaps ‘move outside the box’ or some such other nonsense. 

At the time my black and white printing practice was really quite good so I thought I would try to put multiple photographs back together in the dark room, printing them onto the same piece of paper.

One of the magazines I worked for had a deal with the film manufacturer Kodak at the time so it felt like film usage could be ‘unlimited’ to a degree. 

These ideas provided a way of trying to see beyond the limitations of the frame. Also rather than pulling back and using a wider view initially I could reframe and effectively have a higher resolution final result. This is something that really mattered at 300 dpi in printed magazines and not so much today as we view everything first and foremost on our relatively small mobile phone screens. 

Having started off by doing fairly obvious things that would just easily go back together I then tried to move onto things that would require more frames or an entire roll of film to work.

Another idea that I took on and tried as often as possible was printing in steps from different frames to create a much more hand made look.

Eventually of course the technique was “refined” by various action sports scenes, most notably, snowboarding and motocross with photographers using the infinite capabilities of the Photoshop graphics manipulation program in putting many frames back together without showing that they were doing so. This created a hyperreal look that never appealed to me but still lingers today.

I preferred the much more raw way of doing things and have returned to the archive recently to represent some pictures that I always wanted to look a certain way but never had the time to make them so.