Photomontage pioneer Jerry Uelsmann dies in Florida at 87

By DAVID FISCHER
Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — Surrealist photographer and photomontage pioneer Jerry Uelsmann has died in Florida. He was 87. University of Florida officials say Uelsmann died Monday in Gainesville, where he was a professor emeritus at the school. Decades before the invention of computer programs like Photoshop, Uelsmann began assembling photographs from multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work to create surreal landscapes and other images. Uelsmann became influential in the 1960s by compositing images using multiple enlargers, which are specialized transparency projectors used to produce photographic prints from negatives. Many of the darkroom techniques developed by Uelsmann would later make their way into photomanipulation software, though Uelsman never made the switch to digital tools.