Photoshop - Enabling the Impossible? For years artists have been creating, painting sculpting and editing surreal art, but in the recent years people have been given a new toolset, Photoshop allows the user to edit and manipulate images to their specification whether they choose to change simple things like brightness and saturation to more complex tasks like removing backgrounds and compiling several photos into the same one, the choices are unlimited and this has led to artist creating realistic surreal art, but how can we define surreal art? Well to simply put it, it is an artistic style that is not possible in real life, perhaps like a dream or a fantasy. Recently I have been attempting to create photos with narratives, Photoshop can help with this by making the audience ask questions and the best way to get questions to be asked is by creating something unnatural. During the essay I will mention and follow the work of several artists including; Eric Johansson and Kyle Thompson both of which create surreal art using Photoshop to achieve the impossible in different ways. Eric Johansson “To me photography is just a way to collect material to realize the ideas in my mind” Eric Johansson is a full time photographer and graphic artist from Sweden based in Berlin, Germany. Eric manipulates his photographs to create surreal ideas in the most realistic of ways. The quote above shows his perspective on how Photoshop enables the impossible, to elaborate on the quote he says that he is able to use photography to create these visions he has, and we can see from his work that they are almost dream like. “Drifting Away” Eric’s Piece; “Drifting away’ is one of his latest pieces and was how I found this artist. Following a pattern of surreal landscapes “Drifting away” features a miniature farmhouse within a bottle floating in the sea. Now whilst this could be achieved using miniature models instead using 123 layers and many photos in Photoshop has created an amazingly detailed piece of art. The main use of Photoshop in this piece was to cut different images together, in his Behind the Scenes we can see the images used and how they are stitched together. The detail in this piece is really what makes it surreal, Eric is able to reflect light in perfect ways to create highlights and draw attention to the subject, and is able to uses Photoshop to get the refraction within the water to achieve lighting of extreme high quality.
Page 1 of 8
“Cut and Fold” His next piece entitled “Cut and Fold” Is another surreal landscape of his created through the use of Photoshop. Once again using many photographs Erik has achieved the playful idea of cutting along a line this line being the road. What makes this piece effective is the scale of it, by adding in a biker we can see how grand of a piece it is, if it was smaller it could possibly be a real model, however through the use of scale we can see that the creation is impossibly structured; to make this realistic Erik has made sure to Photoshop dirt layers underneath the cut and has manipulated the lighting to too fool you into thinking its real. The composition of this piece, having the cut in the foreground allows the viewer to first concentrate on that but then in the background we have additional details such as the fields that have been cut as well. Finally having the road in its position helps direct the view of the audience as they will follow the direction of the road. Now what really makes this piece of art break the boundaries is how we are able to see “behind the scenes” of under the road and underneath the tree which is something no one would really be able to see in reality however Erik has created this impossible piece through manipulative Photoshop to prove anything is possible.
Page 2 of 8
“Common Sense Crossing” My final piece I will analyze by Erik Johansson is a piece named “Common Sense Crossing”. Now this is a very interesting piece for someone to comprehend. Erik has manipulated a 4-way crossing to achieve an effect similar to Escher’s “Relativity”.
This mind boggling piece has lots of detailed included in it and people could look at it for ages trying to work out which ways is up! Photoshop has enabled Erik to stich the pieces together without any clear indication of where the pieces meet. I think the colour in this was very important; having it desaturated prevents any glaring colours so that nothing seems out of the ordinary. The main focal point being the middle of the “X” intersects allows the viewer to branch off and look at the other roads and each of its subjects. The cars in this image are very important, without them if you were to try to imagine the piece would seem very normal, just several streets however adding them in makes the audience question which direction is correct as all of the audience are used to seeing a car the right way up. Unlike the other two pieces by Eric this one is immediately identifiable of being Photo Shopped due to the pure surrealism that would not be remotely possible without the program. Page 3 of 8
Kyle Thompson: Our next artist is called Kyle Thompson, like our previous artist Kyle uses Photoshop to create surreal pieces to trick the minds of his audience. However unlike Erik’s pieces Kyle will focus on a main subject (usually a person) in particular rather than the surroundings. Kyle was born in Chicago on January 11th, 1992 and found his love of photography at the age of nineteen after taking interest in abandoned houses which helps explain why his work creates such an eerie atmosphere. I have chosen Kyle as an artist due to how his pieces make you ask questions as to what is happening in the piece, this encourages viewers to think about the piece and helps create narrative. “By diverting the view of the face, the image becomes more ambiguous, the viewer is no longer able to tie a defined story line to the image” (“Note; Many of Kyle Thompson’s pieces are not named, or called untitled so sometimes they will be referred to as “Untitled” if need be”) “Untitled” (2012) Our first image may be considered very bland compared to all the things to look at in Erik Johansson’s work, unlike Eric’s work this image features a normal looking path with no big changes to the environment, however this piece achieves a different effect. The portrait composition allows you to follow the path straight to the puddle in which we have a man submerged up to his nose in water. The colours of the piece features mainly red from the leaves but the pale skin colour of the man helps make it stand out. By Photo shopping a head into the puddle may seem simple but helps to produce questions, “Why is the puddle so deep?”, “What is he staring at?” or “Why is he in this situation?” How this piece of work does not seem too out of the ordinary and is not breaking the boundaries yet, as a puddle could really be Page 4 of 8
that deep” So whilst the image does not break reality it does make the audience questions it.
“Untitled” (2012) Despite having a no name this next piece is certainly an unusual piece of art. Kyle has manipulated some fabric to create an eerie image of a man being lifted by curls of fabric. Having the composition almost center creates the main focal point however using spirals the audience can’t help but follow this assisting with viewing the whole image. The use of colours especially in the skin tone help bring this to attention and was most likely achieved in Photoshop by changing the brightness and contrast and without it may make the fabric or background seem unnatural. Finally the nature of this image will make the audience ask questions increasing odd questions; “Why is he shirtless?”, “Why is he blindfolded?”, “Why is he being lifted?” and these questions will make us ponder on the piece to appreciate it. The fact that the audience need to ask these questions help raise a point, we would normally ask a question if we are confused by something new, what we see in Kyles work is not possible in real life and so it makes us ask questions that we may not usually ask in normal photography, Photoshop has given a chance for people to create work that makes us question “Is this real?”
Page 5 of 8
Joel Robison Joel Robison is a portrait photographer living in Cranbrook, British Columbia Canada. He creates images in which things like size, scale, movement and function doesn’t play by the rules of reality. Photoshop relies frequently in his work although it may be possible to fake scale by using big props Robison takes it to the extreme by using very large-scale differences. “Decorating the night”
Page 6 of 8
Joel mentions that this shoot was not meant to be how it was however due to the nature of Photoshop he was able to play around with the images to get something he liked and the result is pretty daunting. Whilst it is known that you can force perspective within a picture Joel has pushed this to the next level. What separates this from a forced perspective image is the lighting and colours, Joel has added in shadows being cast by the moon as well as a light haze surrounding it, this detail is what makes the image surreal,. The title of the image; “Decorating the night”, could refer to the fact that he has added the moon in himself using Photoshop. The lighting gives of a very calm vibe this is because of the blue tone of the image however it could resemble the weight of the world on his shoulders. Photoshop has given the man in the image super human powers something not available in real life. "The beauty of life is to experience yourself."
At first glance nothing seems to out of the ordinary in Joel’s next piece until you realize the perspective, “Is the man sitting on the wall?”, “Is it really a top down perspective?”, these are a few questions that come to mind when viewing this piece and if the audience need to ask questions then something must be surreal in this piece. Unlike any of the other pieces of art I have looked at so far this piece has the simplest designs; there is no village in a bottle or man holding the moon, just a man sitting down with photos hovering around him. Now despite the simple design Photoshop has allowed Joel to convey the message of memories through the use of the photographs, the title suggests that you should experience life yourself and not Page 7 of 8
through other people. The focal point makes the mage believable giving the image the depth it needs to look like it could be possible. In conclusion has Photoshop enabled the impossible? Well of course! Art has been used for centuries as a way of conveying the artist’s feelings through the use of painting, films, songs and many other methods and these feelings tell stories, some stories are true and others will be exaggerated and Photoshop is just a more modern way of portraying your feelings. All the artists I looked at had a different story to tell whether it be creating your own little world or showing how you feel every one of them has used Photoshop to create a realistic yet impossible situation that is sure to capture your imagination. Biography • Drifting Away Video: o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHVroXo_K50 • Drifting Away Image: o http://erikjohanssonphoto.com/work/drifting-away/ • Cut and Fold Image: o http://erikjohanssonphoto.com/work/cut-fold/ • Common Sense Crossing Image: o http://erikjohanssonphoto.com/work/common-sense-crossing/ • Escher’s Relativity: o http://www.scottmcd.net/artanalysis/?p=548 • Kyle Thompson’s Work: o http://www.kylethompsonphotography.com/ • Joel Robisons Work: o https://www.flickr.com/photos/joel_r/
Page 8 of 8