Thread: 20 year old surrealist photographer

Just watched a video of this young man that takes the kind of photographs I wish I could make.
“One Photo a Day”: Budding photographer finds living in surrealism « Flickr Blog

Amazing work, but I think I'd get tired of looking at this style of photos rather quickly.

Some really cool shots! I love surrealism in paintings, and some surrealist photography really presses the right buttons with me as well. Some of his shots are definitely connecting with me

Some very interesting concepts!

It's creative, but quite bizarre at the same time. I don't really connect with the concept of "photography as art".

Originally Posted by Luckypenguin

It's creative, but quite bizarre at the same time. I don't really connect with the concept of "photography as art".

And I'm going in the opposite direction. Representational photography (not sure this is the right term, but what I mean is capturing a scene as it exists) is less interesting to me all the time. Don't get me wrong. Captures of extraordinary moments or a scene that others are not likely to see fall into a different category for me.

I guess it's good that there are so many different aspects to photography. I'd hate to ONLY see landscapes, or ONLY flower macros, or ONLY street shots, or ONLY portraits. My taste is kind of "pot luck", but gravitating towards the kind of shots that NO ONE else has in their portfolio.

It was interesting initially (reviewing his set on flickr), but he's very repetitious. Lots of "c" shaped body posts. Half-eyes closed, looking to the left or right, hanging from cloth. I like the idea of surrealism, but he's going to need more concepts. But it sounds like he's just getting started, so lots of room for growth and learning. It will be interesting to see how he develops.

Interesting stuff. Shows where you can go with a simple Photo-A-Day project, imagination and lots of time. Most of the stuff we do and see is documentary photography, he does in a art genre of photography. I'd prefer to shoot something in between his full manipulation of the medium and documentary ... more like abstract, where one captures an artistic effect from an existing subject without any manipulation.

Gary

Nic, I know what you mean, and for my own photography I prefer to just stumble upon something that I find wonderful, and show my wonder in a photograph. I think most of us here are like that, and it's a type of photography that leans heavily on having the eye, compositional skill, timing and sometimes stealth necessary to translate your vision into an image. This guy's photography starts out with a concept, and then relies on creativity to turn that concept or emotion into an image. The cleverness usually isn't in the photographic skill, but in the concept first, and secondly in the way the concept has been brought to life. Once you accept that, I think it's a lot easier for us who love photography not only for the resulting images but also as an activity and a skill to practice, to appreciate the works of artists like Kyle Thompson.

From his shots, I prefer the shots that didn't require photoshop to make the concept work (for instance, I prefer the balloons/suit shot over the cloth wings shot), and in general I prefer scenes that, although unlikely and dreamlike, you could in principle find in real life without having to break any laws of nature. I feel the same way about surrealist paintings; I much prefer Magritte over Dali, for instance.

Bless 'im, he's only 20, and you don't get to be Man Ray when you're 20 unless you're Man Ray ...