As you all know, we love art and especially photography, as even if a picture wouldn’t be worth a thousand words, a good picture, just as a good painting, can transport you to a different world, give you another perspective, change something about the way you see the world or report yourself to it. Art history knows plenty of famous photographers who managed to stand the test of time and become legends in their field. As where as impossible photography is concerned, maybe we don’t use the term correctly, but we have some explanation for it: let’s say that a picture is meant to capture reality. A photo turns immortal a person, a life’s moment, a landscape, a scene, an object and so on. This is why we still use photography as witnesses, as time – standing pylons that prove without a doubt (and in the absence of photo tampering and manipulation) that at some point in time, reality was in a certain way. By impossible photography, we understand those art works that even still capture reality as it is, but which defy the known laws of physics either because they are thoroughly manipulated, either because the artists have a fine skill of playing with our minds. Today we will take a look at the works of two photographers who managed to impress us with their impossible photography skills and let you decide if defying the laws of physics is a matter of artistic talent or just good photo manipulation software skills.
The impossible photography of Michael Rhode
This German artist is the possessor of not only a talent to blow our minds with his photography, but also an interesting background. His art, called by the experts Impossible Perspectives, apparently has roots in Michael’s history of being a homeless and living in all sorts of places in Berlin. The way he “sees” space and objects is definitely revolutionary and the hard work behind all the juxtapositions he did is breath taking. But what is Michael’s impossible photography anyway? According to Katie Hosmer’s article on My Modern Met,
To create the photographs, the artist merged hundreds of individual images into one composition. The space is disorienting and viewers will remain captivated as they attempt to make sense of each arrangement. We are visually led to believe that the foundation of a floor has been eliminated and are thus faced with quite the challenge of deciphering the scene. Objects that normally rest on the floor seem to be happily hovering in a weightless room and Rohde provides us with the unique opportunity to gaze, with ease, underneath desks, chairs, tables, countertops, and even a refrigerator!
We’ll take a look over some of Michael’s brilliant impossible photography and invite you to take a look at a more extended gallery. And if you like his works, you should know that others are challenging themselves with messing up with our perspective on reality too. Another German artist, Menno Aden is offering us also “from above” photos to actually give us a height freight.
The Art of Kaija Straumanis
Kaija Straumanis is a young female photographer who took art and fun to another level and publicly released an impossible photography project where she is captured on camera… being hit in the face by different objects. Now what is amazing about her photos is that they make you wonder how many shots were necessary to get those pictures and… wasn’t she hurt by those objects? Of course, it is hard to believe that somebody actually threw a glass at her and broke it against her temple, but as impossible photography goes in our book, she did indeed mess up with reality. Perhaps these pictures won’t be used in any court of law as undeniable proof, but the fact is that her project may become a source of inspiration for other artists to “manipulate reality” even for the sake of fun and originality.
If you have other examples of impossible photography that sometimes fools the eye and defies the laws of physics, don’t hesitate to let us know. We love a good challenge and let’s face it: a new perspective is always welcome in a world obsessed with selfies and Instagram shootings of breakfast dishes and cats.
