Collage shortcuts

Recently, after moving a bookshelf in my working space, I discovered a Polaroid taped to the wall showing this collage:

And I went into some reflection. The collage dates from the seventies, from my first marriage, my two children being a little older than on the collage. What strucks me is the way the collage was done, if I compare it to my actual ones.
It seems to me much more “realistic” with relatively little intervention in the pictures themselves. But, looking at the content, there is much to say. First of all, the family is split – the “father” is up in the air whereas the mother and the children are on a deck, playing, sunbathing. But the deck is not level and its inclination menaces the group. Their base is not solid. Furthermore, the big waves from behind are another menace to the idyll. And the father is doing a somersault way up in the sky. In fact, the marriage was wrecked and my life took another turn some years later, a leap into freedom in fact. As to the newer picture:

even if the persons are distorted, they keep well together, with their differences and personal inner life. And the father is there. So the apparently “realistic” collage which appeals more easily to the beholder is in fact showing an endangered world whereas the deconstructed one is much more solid.