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This is What Happens When Photography Meets Design

Julie Cockburn, an artist from London, fuses photography and design as she improvises vintage photographs and turns them into great works of art. The results are a new way of art that comes from the old.

Colossal, a blog that explores the aspects of art and visual culture featured the new product that came from combining photography and design. Julie Cockburn achieved her works when she found these vintage photographs and started embroidering bright fabrics and other materials over the photos' surfaces. The photos are a mixture of black and white, sepia, and colors that have faded through time. She acquired these images from flea markets and online (on eBay) and she changes their artistry by mingling her own perspectives and artistic touches.

Cockburn uses patterns that overlap with the original photographs and it just changes regular photography to a more abstract form of art. However, this is not a breakthrough of art as embroidered photographs have been around with various artists showing their own rendition of these improvised photographs. Pinterest showed a selection of photographs that showed different ways of adding embroidery and making your photographs look more alive and artistic.

Julie Cockburn shows her own version of this photography and art fusion. Unlike other artists who work around and with the photographs, Cockburn works OVER them and obscuring the original vintage looks thus giving out the more abstract appearance. Some photographs of portraits of women are now abstruse due to cloth and patterns covering their faces. The Photographer's Gallery featured Cockburn's works showing a more modern approach to embroidered photographs. Whereas most artists go for beautifying and enhancing the photos, Cockburn uses the embroider to make a completely new appearance. Some faded photographs of landscapes look fictional with the contrasting colorful patterns. Go ahead and check out her works and see how they would make you feel.