Jane Long is an Australian artist who adores vintage, historical photographs and creates amazing, colourful portraits combining the past with the present in a really unique way. Old, black and white photographs been taken 50 years ago turned into fantastic, surreal art.
The artist started this project titled ” Dancing with Costica ” in order to try her skills. After discovering the beautiful work of a Romanian photographer, Costică Acsinte, who had taken lots of photographs-documents in WWI and died in 1984, Long chosed to edit with photoshop these photographs. “I wanted to bring them to life. But more than that, I wanted to give them a story” she explained in an interview.
Adding colours and fanciful elements in every single photograph that Costica had taken, Long combines past and present in a magical way! Without chainging the original theme of the pictures she turned them into an eccentric new world contrast the stiff, stately appearance of the individuals.
Although her latest project has been a source of controversy, with lots of people believing that she was disrespectful using photographs of people that she doesn’t know, Long supperts her project saying : “I wanted people to see these figures as real people, more than just an old photograph. Adding colour completely changes our perception of images. I wanted to change the context of the images. Photographic practices at the time meant people rarely smiled in photos, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t laugh and love. I wanted to introduce that to the images. ”
