‘Cubism was about the destruction of a fixed way of looking. A fixed position implies we are standing still, that even our eye is still. Yet we all know our eyes move constantly, and the only time they stop moving is when we’re dead - or when we’re staring. And if we’re staring we’re not really looking. That is the problem with the single-frame photograph: all you can actually do is stare at it. Your eyes cannot wander around in it, because of its inherent lack of time.’

David Hockney, Hockney’s Pictures, Thames and Hudson, London, 2004, p102

Between 1961 and 1981 David Hockney compiled over 100 photo albums, containing over 20,000 photographs. In these albums Hockney would carefully arrange his prints images in double page spreads of typically 6 or 8 photographs, their sequential arrangement suggesting a narrative similar to stills from a film. These photographs were an intimate record of family and friends, they also provided valuable information for paintings, but, despite his prolific output, Hockney did not see photography as a vehicle for his art, finding it too instantaneous - the lack of duration offering an image that he felt was lifeless. Nevertheless, outside interest in his photography grew and in January 1982 curator Alain Sayag came to stay with Hockney in Los Angeles to select photographs for an exhibition at the Pompidou.

After Sayag left, Hockney was left with a pile of Polaroid film which they had been using to document the photographs going into the exhibition. At the time Hockney was struggling to resolve a painting he was making of his home, particularly how best to describe the interior and exterior space in one image. Having argued the case against photography with Sayag for days, Hockney picked up the Polaroid camera and photographed the house, laying out 30 Polaroids in a grid. Realising immediately the potential of his approach he made eight more works within the week and by early May had made 140 of these ‘joiners’.

These Polaroid works could take 4-5 hours to make - much of it spent waiting for the prints to develop - they also necessitated a great deal of floor space, so, in September, Hockney switched to using his Pentax 110. By using conventional film, he could take a sequence of images in quick succession, making it much easier to remember the previous shot. By May 1983, he had produced a further 200 works in this way, of which 42 were made into editions. Multiple prints were made from each negative and these 4 ¾ x 3 ¾ inch prints were laid down with reference to a master notebook. Their production, by ten assistants, was overseen by David Graves with Hockney coming in regularly to approve and sign them.

The photo collages often allude to the act of photography, subjects include Gregory loading a camera, or celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz setting up her equipment, and often include Hockney’s feet, hands or his reflection in a mirror. They present something of a travelogue, as Hockney seeks out the expansive landscape of the American mid-West - Arizona, Utah, Nevada - and travels through California, New York, Minnesota, Yorkshire, London, Japan and Hawaii.

This work was made during a trip to Japan where Hockney had been invited to speak at a conference about the uses of paper in art. Robert Rauschenberg had also been invited and Hockney made a photo-collage of him speaking at the event. The present work is the companion piece to Gregory Watching the Snow Fall, Kyoto, 21 February 1983 which shows Gregory in bed, looking through to this room. Gregory, who was at this time Hockney’s boyfriend, appears at the very centre of the composition, the surrounding space delineated by radiating lines of prints, of which there are 76 in total. Gregory sits reading, with travel essentials - cigarettes, book of Haiku, airmail letters - on the table. The warm tones enhance the easy intimacy of the image, while the red and white grid of the tourist map of Kyoto, and the square structure of the roof echo the rhythms of the laid down prints.

In a lecture at the V & A in November 1983, Hockney reflected on these works - relating them to both Cubism and to Chinese scroll paintings ‘which must be experienced in time like music or literature’. Hockney finds in his photo collages a direct parallel with drawing, they are about line he says, not colour. By rejecting Renaissance ideas of single-point perspective he achieves an animated, immersive image which more accurately reflects how we see and experience the world.

After the Japan trip Hockney made only a few more photocollages – he felt he had exhausted the possibilities of the process, at least for the time being, although he returned to the technique intermittently to make larger works – a notable later example being Pearblossom Highway #1, 11-18 April, 1986 (47 x 64 inches). It is clear that this period of intense experimentation with photography allowed Hockney to work through far more compositional ideas than would have been possible through painting alone and that this unique way of looking at and recording the world permanently changed his approach to and understanding of perspective. Sometimes individual photo-collages have directly informed a sequence of paintings The Chair, 1985 for example became the starting point for the painting Van Gogh Chair, 1988. Hockney has also taken the notion of multiple frames back into his painting - A Bigger Grand Canyon, 1998, for example, was made up from 60 individual canvases. These ideas have reemerged more recently in video works such as the 9 screen film The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods (Spring 2011, Summer 2010, Autumn 2010, Winter 2010), 2010-2011 and his digitally made photographic collages shown in Painting and Photography at Annely Juda in 2015.