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Matinee: 'Impossible Photography'
31 August 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 567th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Impossible Photography.
It amused us to watch this 2012 TED talk by Eric Johansson about his Photoshop composites in light of today's artificial intelligence onslaught.
Johansson, a Swedish artist based in Prague, creates what looks like a real photograph but features Escher-like logical inconsistencies. In fact, he cites Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Rob Gonsalves and Jacek Yerka as influences in addition to M.C Escher.
He starts with a sketch that functions as a plan for constructing the final image from discreet photographs that match the angle, light and depth of field. He uses a Hasselblad H5D-40 camera and a 35-90mm lens to capture each image.
So much of the discussion of AI images is about the realism of the results derived from mere verbal description. Johansson's images are just as realistic if just as contrived. But in his case they express some idea.
That's what we found intriguing. That the success of the image involved the expression of some specific idea, not merely the realism of some vague description.
And unlike AI images, Johansson's images make you stop a moment to ask what's going on. You know something is off but it isn't immediately apparent what that is.
You have to look. Something you don't always say about an image generated by AI.