Maggie Taylor uses found materials, a flatbed scanner and Adobe Photoshop to create her wistful, atmospheric photo-collages. Her images have a feeling of 19th Century academic art and a consistency that puts me in mind of Max Ernst’s graphic collage novel Une Semaine du Bonté.
Taylor has applied her image making sensibilities, which frequently feel theatrical, with characters presented in front of backgrounds that have been manipulated to appear like painted cloth back-drops, to an often illustrated literary work in her upcoming book Almost Alice (image above). When traditional illustrators take on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I can’t help but compare them to John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham, a light against which few can shine, but Taylor’s soft, dreamy interpretation is different enough to be completely charming.
The flavor of her Alice is in keeping with her other work, which is suffused with Surrealist inspired dream nostalgia and visual non-sequiturs. On her web site you’ll find four galleries of images, the second of which is a preview of the Alice book, which is due out next year. There are also galleries of her earlier work and book illustration in the “extras” section. (I can’t give you convenient direct links because the site is in frames.)
You’ll also find links to her previous book titles, Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, a “how it’s done” examination of her work by Amy Standen, which is complimented by a Maggie Taylor Landscape of Dreams 2008 Wall Calendar; and Solutions Beginning with A, a limited edition monograph by Lola Haskins and Maggie Taylor, which may only be available from the publisher. There is also mention of an exhibition catalog from the Museum of Photography in Seoul.
There is also an article about Taylor in the June 2007 issue of Adobe Magazine, which can be downloaded in PDF form from the Adobe Magazine web site.
[Link and suggestion courtesy of Daniel van Benthuysen]
Most definitely the Alice in Wonderland effect. The dress has such a real quality to it that you want to reach out and touch the fabric. Very impressive.
Actually, some of the figures can be dolls that she dresses and photographs. That may be what happened here, and why the fabric looks so real.