Photoshop has enabled the impossible to happen in photographs. Explore how artists have pushed the boundaries between reality and the impossible. Photographers and designer have been experimenting and exploring with surrealism. Working on creating the impossible through using new techniques and ideas to further their skills in the art form which has become very popular over the last 20 years as Photoshop came around. With such easy access to incredible possibilities to manipulate any photographs it means there are also many possibilities to create stories and to enhance how they are told. Everyone will interpret images differently, but with the possibility to entirely change an image, it creates impressive stories. There are so many artists and designers that base their work around the ability to manipulate their photographs to create a narrative piece, that is why I have chosen the question above. I feel that gaining some kind of insight into this side of graphic work, it will help me improve my own narrative pieces, and it will also help me see how other artists and designers go about surrealism in art. I have researched several artists and designers that specialize in using photo manipulation to create exciting and unusual pieces that catch the viewer's eye. Most of these artists using Photoshop to help them push the boundaries of reality. A lot of the designers and artists I have researched have differentiated between keeping their work quite simple with small changes, whilst others have quite complex pieces that are very clearly manipulated. The photographers that will appear in this essay are: Giuseppe Mastromatteo, Wanda Wulz, and Kyle Thompson. These artists mostly definitely relate to the topic of this essay, due to the fact that mostly all use photoshop primarily to create their pieces. Using photoshop to create narrative pieces and base it around surrealism and breaking the impossible. Even though some of the work between the artist's may seem similar, I will be comparing them to look at the similarities and differences between each one's pieces, looking at what kind of narrative stories they portray in their work with either subtle editing or taking very outrageous editing opportunities. But with the artwork having no words, these pieces are going to raise questions and be different to the viewer's so I will also be comparing the effects they have on the viewer. Being influenced by a lot of different artists but also through my own ideas I've managed to pick up a lot of techniques in photo manipulation, pretty much entirely working through photoshop. So I will be able to look into further detail at how the artists have created certain artworks, and also use this essay to help improve my own work, and how I can further my own work by looking into the art of incredible designers. The first artist I researched was Giuseppe Mastromatteo, he creates surrealist pieces that push the boundaries of what is physically possible, expressing his ideas through photo manipulation creates very unusual and intriguing photographs. Mastromatteo is a photographer who was born in Italy on August 10th 1970. Giuseppe Mastromatteo has been working as an artist for more than a decade. After a period spent as a recordist assistant inside a record company, Mastromatteo graduated from Accademia di Comunicazione di Milano with a degree in art direction. Since 2005, Mastromatteo’s works have been exhibited at the Fabbrica Eos Art Gallery Milan, Emmanuel Fremin Gallery in New York, Paris, Miami, Basel, Instanbul as well as national and international art fairs. He likes to develop his art projects in New York where he has lived for three years.
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chose to look at Mastromatteo's work because I think that his work his quite simple, but is incredible. It's unusual yet still beautiful. A lot of his work fits under the very simple yet beautiful photo manipulations, as there is two projects he has done were called 'Indepensense 2009' and Indepensense 2012'. So this kind of art is typical of the photographer. The mood of the artwork he does surrounds the idea of beauty and fashion as his work is created in a studio then manipulated in photoshop afterwards. The image above depicts a woman covering her eyes with her hands, but her eyes have been edited onto her hands. This imagery relates to narrative as there may be a story behind this image, when Mastromateeo published this prokject he never gave any description to the individual pieces, so it seems to be a mystery as to what the true narrative behind it all is, but it allows the viewer to make their own conclusions on what it could mean. The composition of this image leaves a blank background and the model in the forground, as both the background and model are quite pale t dosen't make for a heavy contrast of the piece. It is quite light along with the lighting not being very harsh it may allow you to view the image as quite pure and ilght hearted. There is not much negative space in the photograph. The main focus point of this piece is the eys on the hand, it may relate to childhood, that even though the model cover's their eyes, the memories are still there in plain sight. So it possibley could be that there is no escape from what the model saw. That is my personal opinion on what the topic of this piece could be. But with the lighting and placement it may just be a fashion or adrvetising art piece. Rather than a self-expresive photograph. The piece is somewhat realistic but it's just that key point o the image that makes it unusual and interesting to the viewer. It switched from quite a simple photograph to something with a deeper meaning, it raises several questions. So with a narrative piece that it the kind of result you would want from a viewer. I like the colours that are used in the projects that Mastromatteo as they are quite simple with a low contrast. It's not harsh on the eys and there isn't so many brighht colours so that you are distracted from the main point of the image. Small amount of colour run though the artwork, suvch as through the lips, or the eye colour. But overall there Is very minimal. But all photographs are in perfect focus and clear, very detailed, you can see the texture of the hair, and the eyelashes of the woman, the way her lips would feel. I feel that the artist was aiming to suggest the idea of not wanting to hold onto the memories but not being able to escape them , but as there is no story officially from Mastromatteo that means there is only the different opinions of the viewer. I feel that if the artist was aiming for that idea he succeeded well, by keeping the image simple, and subtle, it let the viewer's mind wander and go deeper into the image and it's meaning.The colours is surely important to the mood set, as they are quite subdued it keeps the mood a quite a calm level. The calmness of the image relates to another artist I will be researching next, Kyle Thompson creates more complex images but keeps the mood of them all very calm.
Kyle Thompson describes his work as surreal conceptual photography, he was born January 11th 1992. Thompson's work usually is self-portraiture and aims at being completely unusual by using a higher quality of techniques and ideas that express interesting narratives through his work. The image above depicts Kyle Thompson with a large knife hovering above his hand. The image is quite interesting as it seems as though Thompson is magical and can make things hover, its also interesting as this could be said to be the narrative of this image. But seen as the expression on his face seems to be quite plain, maybe there is a sadder, deeper meaning to this, maybe a problem with mental health leading to self harm, or maybe something psychologically darker as in a possible killer. It all relates to how the viewer may see and then interpret an image. Kyle Thompson is slightly to the right of the image, with only his head and shoulders showing as he has his hand stretched out to the left of him with a knife pointing downwards at his hand. The main focus point of this art is the knife as it's quite a statement, and takes up a large portion of the photograph. Being as the only other subject is Thompson, it's what the viewer would see first. I would possibly say that the story behind this image is resulting from as I said before mental health issues, and how that revolves around different actions caused by those issues. The work is incredibly realistic, as the editing is done well, and it could fool people that were unaware of photo manipulation into believing Thompson had those kinds of abilities to do such a thing. I feel that the choices of colours in this image relate to what Mastromatteo did, with a low contrast colour palette and with small colour. The background ir a purple colour, quite dull whilst Thompson's skin tone doesn't contrast much from the background it leaves the image to be quite calm, the lighting isn't too harsh either. Even the knife itself doesn't have much of a contrast to the background and Thompson. I believe that the artist was aiming to suggest some kind of emotional problem, as the expression on his face just is expressionless, he seems quite 'dead' inside. It leaves the viewer wondering whether the person is okay, and raises many questions to what is going on in the image. I feel that the colours in this piece are important as they all work together well, if the colours were quite dark the image would seem sinister whereas if the colours were bright it would relate the image to some idea of a clown, a very sinister clown.
Onto my next artist, Wanda Wulz, she was born in 1902 and unfortunately died in 1984, but she was able to manipulate what is reality and the impossible way before photoshop came around. This piece she created in her early life in 1934 is called 'lo+gatta' and is manipulation of herself and her cat, by using double exposure to carefully place the images over one another to make this effect. The camera is projected directly in front and angled slightly down towards the face of Wulz and the cat. The image seemingly fits so weel together to make it seem as if there is some kind of half animal half human creature. In a time where there was no photoshop it may have been very unusual to see this kind of editing as it is wasn't too popular, and not everyone could afford cameras. But Wulz came across the ability of being ablt to use double exposure to edit pictures together and create a final piece such as this which is unusual and interesting to a viewer in that time and now also. With editing we have now, this may seem like quite a simple edit to create, but then it wasn't so easy. Either way, now or then, it is still eye catching and beautiful. The work does seem quite realistic as the two images overlap incredibley well. The piece looks quite moody , it may seem as though Wulz was trying to create a piece that had a story of an amazing creature of two species or some kind of superpower. Or an alter ego even. I do really like that the image is simply in black and white, there is no bold, distracting, or busy colours that take over the main focus of the image which is the ace of two different species. The three artists and the three pieces I feel are very different to one another, with different art styles and colours, and ideas. The only similarities is that they have left the image with not much of a story behind it, leaving the viewer to try to guess what the picture is suppose to represent. All of the images contain a model as the main focus, and only added one detail to make it a piece that becomes eye catching and different. Both Giuseppe mastrometteo and Wanda Wulz decided to edit a feature on the body its self. Mastromatteo editing over the arm of the model with lips and Wulz, editing over the left half of the face with a cat. Their art stylesdiffer a lot aswell. Thompson has a lot of coliur in his pieces, leaving the feel of the image to be quite bright and happy, only leaving the subject of the image to change that. Whilst Mastromatteo left the colours quite plain, with certain aspects being bold enough to draw the main focus, such as the lips and eyes. But finally, with Wulz keeping the basic black and white, it held a good and strong contrast but nothing to drastic. I feel that Photoshop has enabled photographers to push the boundaries between what is impossible and what is reality. There are so many techniques and so many opportunities that ar possible through Photoshop and several other editing skills. You can make anything come true with Photoshop with simple or very complex editing. Mastromatteo and Thompson used quite simple eiditng as they took photographs of the models on their own, and then took a photograph of the other object or feature tht would draw focus. Then overlaping thse images and making any
necessary touches, these pieces were made. It isn't the most complex editing, but that simply proves that it is incredibley easy to manipulate the impossible into reality through Photoshop. Even though Wulz was able to do something very similar to photographers today but back in 1943, way before many others had worked out how to do so, she still couldn't do everything that was done today. We have progressed greatly from 60 years ago, even 10 years ago. Photoshop and photography will progress further and further pushing all boundaries of what is technically possible. Through all of my research I have come to the conclusion that, yes, Photoshop does enable photographers to create the impossible in their work. Bibliography http://www.giuseppemastromatteo.com/ http://ezinearticles.com/?History-of-Surreal-Photography&id=720571 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phsr/hd_phsr.htm http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/ETHICS.HTM http://www.kylethompsonphotography.com/ http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/265159 http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/faking-it-manipulated-photography-before-photoshop/