The Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in Balboa Park has embarked on an exhibition of photomontage called “New Realities,” which will be running until Jan. 30, 2011. This is a very startling and arresting show which will stun, shock and amaze viewers in a very enjoyable way. The show features the analog work of Jerry Uelsmann, whose black and white photographs — integrating nature, man and civilization — are dark, jarring, bold and confrontative. It also features Maggie Taylor, Uelsmann’s wife, whose digitally-produced “Haunted House/Wonderland” color photographs are dreamy, colorful and mystic. Photomontage is the process of combining two or more different photographic images to create a new, different and perhaps unusual single picture. There are two methods of photomontage. The analog process utilizes multiple enlargers in the chemical darkroom. The photographic paper is moved from enlarger to enlarger, each loaded with a different negative. The digital method makes use of a flatbed scanner and a computer. You scan images onto the computer in layers and then manipulate them with a software program such as Photoshop. Jerry Uelsmann, who works in the analog tradition of photomontage pioneered by Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Rejlande, was born in 1931 in Detroit, Mich. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indian University, where he was a student of the legendary photographer Minor White. Over the years, he has been a frequent contributor to Aperture magazine. His photographs appeared in the opening credits of the 1995 edition of the TV show “Outer Limits” and his pictures are in Stephen King’s novel “Salem’s Lot.” Uelsmann is a very articulate and theoretically-oriented photographer associated with the idea of “post visualization” — that the negative is only the starting place for the photograph. He is said to produce “allegorical and surrealistic imagery of the unfathomable.” Uelsmann’s work is considered to be both psychological and spiritual. “I see photography as a spiritual activity,” he said. “It permits me to challenge accepted ways of seeing the world and come up with a vision that opens up the world to new possibilities.” Uelsmann sees the camera as a “metamorphosing machine” with a “license to explore.” He thinks that “… in the darkroom the adventurous spirit should be set free — free to search and hopefully to discover.” Some of Uelsmann’s images in the show include trees floating in the air; a face and a body embedded in a rocky cliff face; an interior study without a roof to the sky; a glowing tree a house coming out a of a large tree trunk; chairs in a circle in the clouds; and a naked girl in a seashell. Taylor, who works with digital photomontage, was born in 1961 in Cleveland, Ohio. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Yale and a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Florida, where she was Uelsmann’s student and then later his wife. Taylor likes to work with objects that might be found at a flea market or an antique store. Her source materials also include early droll-faced and deadpan portraits such as found in daguerreotypes, tintypes and ambrotypes, from the tradition of the Victorian photo album, which are scanned, like her physical objects, on an Epson 2450 Scanner. She then loads her images in layers using Photoshop CS on a Mac G4 computer. She prints her final pictures on an Epson 9600 printer using matte surface paper. Taylor works on her pictures a little at a time, layering in parts of one picture, then another. She also manipulates lighting and coloration. He work is considered to be something between painting and photography, although she has almost completely stopped using the camera. In contrast to Uelsmann’s theoretical bent, Taylor is very practical and mostly concerned with the intricacies and difficulties of using Photoshop, although she does say she tries to capture the literary tradition of “magical realism,” exemplified by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, in which the idea is to make the fantastic seem believable. Taylor, whose work reminds one of the French surrealist painter Rene Magritte or “Alice In Wonderland” illustrator John Tenniel, has two types of images in the show. One is a haunted house-type of ghostly portrait with a turn-of-the-century feel, such as a man — rising out of lily pond — who has a tree growing out of his collar instead of a head; a woman surround by butterflies; or a boy with a bird. Her other type of image resembles illustrations from “Alice in Wonderland.” For further information see www.mopa.org or call (619) 238-7559.