Under the Influence by Henry Flores - Troy Vong Nguyen

 Henry Flores is a graphic designer from Ecuador and now currently works for Studio Tresneuronas. His photographs and works have been published in numerous magazines with “People”, “Los Angeles Times” and “Life&Style” being only a few of them. His main subjects are usually of people posed mostly in an editorial way with inanimate objects composited in a more surreal composition throughout his pieces. As for the elements in his work, it is characterized by bold, vibrant colors along with abstract shapes occupying the space. These eye-catching aspects in his composition creates a lasting impact with how different objects interact with each other that is unlikely to happen in reality. Every single of his works are broken into series.

With his composition, every element is meticulously masked out of their original images and added in through Photoshop through multiple ways to make every element appear to be in one singular space with the addition of shadows and highlights including color balances and exposure levels. There is often repetition of certain visual elements such as inanimate objects like flowers including other plants, animals, and abstract graphics throughout his works that keeps the piece dynamic and interactive for the viewer. In Adidas, Floral World, and Stay Home; these principles are present as repetition of objects are used to create interestingly-shaped composition on top of a flat background. In both Adidas and Stay Home, typography plays a big role into the pieces as oftentimes they’re interacting with the visual elements. His compositions are rather simplistic but the bold choices of elements captivates the viewers regardless.

From his work, I would like to extend these works into my project by creating surreal spaces under the challenge of a simple composition. The use of repetition along with bold colors in his works is something I’d like to experiment with to create these surreal spaces. I plan to work with people and inanimate objects as my subject matters and composite them together to form a new meaning. With typography in some of his works, it would be interesting to incorporate them and have it interact with individual pieces to evoke a certain meaning and/or feeling. It would be interesting to work with a limited amount of objects and create something new through a simple yet dynamic piece.