What is it called when you have a bunch of little picture that make up 1 big picture?

Question

I was at my friends house over the weekend and I noticed she had a picture fram with 9 pictures in it that made up 1 whole picture, like if you blew up a picture then cut it into sections and framed them like 1 inch apart. What is that called when you do that? or what are those types of pictures called?

Answer 1

Those are called "Puzzles".

As someone already said, it is not a mosaic or montage.
It's also not a polyptych, or anything else - except interesting to you.

Polyptych comes from the Greek for "many folds" and are connected panels - usually carved or painted. It is also applied to some forms of comic strips.

In any case - they are always "connected'.

Answer 2

I can't find the word for what you describe, but I know it's not mosaic, photomosaic, or collage.

Mosaic is when you take tiles and place them together to make a big picture. The tiles are not pieces of the big picture but little shapes or unrelated patterns that when put together resemble a picture.

Photomosaic is when you do this with other, small photos.

Collage is when you take different unrelated pictures and put them together as an artistic statement.

What you describe -- one photo, broken apart into 9 photos, and separated from each other -- is none of these.

I'm inclined to call it a "breakout" but that doesn't appear to be right.

Answer 3

A polyptych is a picture made of four or more panels--along the lines of the diptych (two panels) and triptych (three). I figured I'd be funny and coin a new word for a nine-panel work--"nonaptych"-- but out of curiosity I did a search and someone else beat me to it! Polyptych is traditionally correct, though.

re. the below response: while polyptych artworks were hinged 600 years ago, contemporary ones generally aren't!

Answer 4

It's called a photomosaic. Mosaic comes from the type of art it is, a collection of diferent pieces assembled on one surface, and photo- comes from the materials (photographs) used to make it.

Answer 5

it sounds like the image was weaved togetether. it's not any type of a mosaic since it's just one image that's been spliced apart then put back together and doesn't consist of other images

Answer 6

Tinypic?

Answer 7

A collage.


see http://www.art.net/Studios/Visual/Simran/EnfoldingPerspectives/enfolding-perspectives.html
http://www.creativevideoandphotography.com/collages.html

for examples...is this what it looked like?

or a mosaic...

Answer 8

colleague