Book Review: Photomosaics

Many years ago I grabbed books on various alternative art styles. One of the books, new and exciting at the time (think 10 years ago) was on photomosaics. In short, art made by computer that creates a montage of other images. One thousand images of donkeys can be used to make a picture of George Bush for example. One key point here is that they are computer generated. Some fancy algorithm determines the color of the image and makes it fit into a larger picture.

So I finally ended up reading “Photomosaics” by Robert Silvers and Michael Hawley (Silvers invented the concept/art style). Interesting enough read but very shallow, not really diving into the technical aspects of how it’s done. I was ready to pass the book on and mostly forget about it until the last page which included a small plastic magnifying glass so you could examine each small picture that makes up the larger image.

Uh, why? Looking at half centimeter images of stock photography is going to somehow give me insight into the artist or the picture? Please, don’t flatter yourself. Call me petty, call me weird, but that is the silliest thing I have seen in a while.

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