David Hockney|Photographic Collages (Joiners)

The joiners were Hockney's answer to his own complaint about photography. He had dismissed the single camera image as the world seen "from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops". By putting many photographs together he made pictures that hold movement and time, which he believed came closer to the way we actually see.

From Polaroids to joiners

The idea began early in 1982 with composite Polaroids. Hockney made about 150 of them by May, and they were shown in New York, Los Angeles and Paris that summer. Then he changed cameras, and the joiners followed. He photographed the Grand Canyon and Yosemite in September and October 1982, New York in November and December, Yorkshire and London that winter, and Kyoto, Nara and Tokyo in February 1983, when he travelled to Japan to speak at a conference about paper. The sitters include his mother, his friends Celia Birtwell and Gregory Evans, the writer Christopher Isherwood and the film director Billy Wilder. Hockney sometimes appears himself, through his shadow in 'Grand Canyon, Arizona With My Shadow' or his place card at the table in 'Luncheon At The British Embassy, Tokyo, February 16th 1983'. In Kyoto the method changed how he thought about perspective. For 'Walking In The Zen Garden At The Ryoanji Temple' he said, "I had to count and really look at those pebbles to link one with another," and he came away feeling he had "made a photograph without Western perspective".

The editions

Hockney's photographs were printed at ordinary photographic labs. The prints were then pieced together and glued onto card or board, often coloured, so each example of a joiner is itself a collage. Many were sold in frames chosen by the artist. The scale varies widely, from 53.3 x 35.6 cm for 'Gregory Loading His Camera, Kyoto, Feb. 1983' to 115.9 x 254.6 cm, framed, for 'The Grand Canyon Looking North, September 1982'. Examples were shown at the Hayward Gallery in London in 'Hockney's Photographs' (1983 to 1984), and many are reproduced in the book 'Cameraworks' (1984).

Before and after

Hockney had already published single photographs as editions: 'Twenty Photographic Pictures', a 1976 portfolio of colour prints, presented each image as one fixed view. The joiners broke that view into many. The Cubist thinking he explored in the collages then fed back into painting and printmaking. In the 'Moving Focus' lithographs, made with Tyler Graphics from 1984 to 1986, he worked with multipoint and reverse perspective on paper rather than with a camera.

At auction

In April 2025 an example of 'The Desk' sold for $74,160 including fees at Bonhams Los Angeles. An example of 'Raymond Foye Looking At Brooklyn' made £33,020 including fees at Phillips London in March 2023. 'Gregory Reading In Kyoto' made £27,940 at Phillips London in October 2024 and $28,160 at Bonhams Los Angeles in October 2025, both including fees. Earlier, in 2014, an example of 'The Desk' in its original frame made $87,500 including fees at Phillips New York.