My love of collage began back in 1998 in Leeds University bookshop while I was leaning against the shelves, waiting for someone to sort their life out. On those bookshelves I found Grete Stern's photomontages and I fell in love with the super-weird, women-focused worlds. Their weirdness, and their focus on women, was explained by the fact that were based on real women's dreams.

“In 1948 Stern was offered the unusual assignment of providing photos for a column on the interpretation of dreams in the popular weekly women’s magazine Idilio. The column, entitled “Psychoanalysis Will Help You,” was a response to dreams sent in by readers, mostly working-class women. It was written under the pseudonym Richard Rest by renowned sociologist Gino Germani, who later became a professor at Harvard University. The result was a series of about one hundred and fifty photomontages produced between 1948 and 1951 that show Stern’s avant-garde spirit. In these photomontages she portrays women’s oppression and submission in Argentine society with sarcastic and surreal images. The photomontage was an ideal way for Stern to express her ideas about the dominant values.”

— Jewish Women's Archive

A lot of time passed and I eventually forgot about Grete and her beautiful dreamworlds but then I read about Beth Hoeckel in Booooooom and I was back in the game. Hoeckel conjures up her own magical worlds that take me back to recurring childhood dreams and memories I have never been able to shake. I fell in love.

I've not thought too deeply about why I love collage so much and I'm sure overthinking will kill that love. I suppose it's the combination of reality and the unreal - it's the otherworldliness.

Now my walls are packed with Beth Hoeckel, Eugenia Loli, Morgan Hislop and Sammy Slabbinck prints and their otherworldly weirdness fills me with joy.