Tommy Ingberg- Swedish Surrealist
Tommy Ingberg is a Swedish photographer and visual artist who works with his images and digital media editing to create his pieces. The main concept behind his works is to create minimalistic and self-reflecting surreal photo montages dealing with human nature, feelings, and thoughts. Because of this surrealist mindset, he chooses to work up to the viewer and he states, “For me, surrealism is about trying to explain something abstract like a feeling or a thought, expressing the subconscious with a picture. I want the viewers to produce their own questions and answers when looking at the pictures, my own interpretations are really irrelevant in this context.” When it comes to creating these works, he wants to as many photos as possible and edit in Photoshop as little as possible. He believes that well-executed sourced images are a much better option than excessive editing and “fixing” in Photoshop and to true photography keeps it more authentic. His work is a kind of monochromatic visual diary that illuminates an individual’s struggles and strengths, habits and ambitions, their state of mind and place in the world. He feels that in today’s fast-moving and very superficial society, anything that makes you stop and think for a while is very important.
Ingberg’s Reality Rearranged/Solitaire is his first surrealist attempt at photography that is composed of monochromic pieces that focus on his own inner life, thoughts, and feelings as bigger the kickstarter to the whole piece. He describes it as his visual diary as he allows the viewer to then compare it to their own lives and reflect on what they see or feel since it is very personal to him. The goal is for the viewers to produce their own questions and answers when looking at the pictures but having Ingberg’s interpretation irrelevant. When looking at the piece called Puppet, he explains the process of his work from this monochromatic landscape with a surrealist hand grabbing this man who is acting as a “puppet”. It’s a simple montage, consisting of only three elements: the man, the hand, and the background. His background involves the road, ground, and the sky that was all shot on overcast days with soft light, to avoid any sharp shadows. He takes this from the same height and angle, with roughly the same focal length and he does this to have a library of interchangeable backgrounds to use when compositing. The main two elements of the hand and the figure were shot in the studio with the camera set at the fastest shutter speed that syncs with the lighting, the lowest possible ISO to avoid noise, and the aperture along with flash strength to get a good exposure. The techniques for these elements give deep imagery with dark and gloomy images which challenges to question of the true reason for the image, why it was created, and how it relates to the bigger image of life.
Tommy Ingberg’s work has caught my attention because I believe I have the same mindset towards the viewer when it comes to abstract work. I’m very much into surrealist art because I myself want to understand why something abstract was created, what is it connected to, and how is it shown in the bigger picture of life. Even after looking at other artists, I just generally gravitated toward him and how he betrays his work. What really caught my eye was the simple fact of how its simple graphics but it was very deep on the concept. After much research about him, learning how he wants to viewer to depict the reason for the work is what I enjoy doing in my works as well. Plus with much of the projects done so far, I feel my best work comes from monochromatic images to still heighten the idea of interest for the viewer. When it comes to the Under the Influence Project, I ultimately want to use the concept of showing self-reflecting images that are deeper with the minimalistic technique. I would also like to use the monochromatic idea and maybe have a little spin as far as playing with different values, shades, or tints to give a different feel compared to his. But because his work grabs the attention of the viewer in an obvious way, I would like to carry that idea into the works I make.
No comments:
Post a Comment