Landry Hutchens - Under the Influence Research

I have chosen Christos Alamaniotis as the inspiration for my Under the Influence Project. His work resonates strongly with me in how he uses compositing, not simply as a tool or afterthought, but as a central expressive mechanism to create layered and culturally charged visuals.

Alamaniotis works primarily in the realm of music-industry graphics (album covers, merchandise, posters) and underground/counter-culture imagery. His subjects often centre on identity, attitude, and sub­culture—bands, strong visual personalities, the “punk” or post-punk aesthetic, DIY roots, rebellious energy. In his archive of personal works, you find collages that incorporate human faces, fragmented typography, stylized iconography, and slogans. These suggest themes of vulnerability, rage, transformation, and the collision of pop imagery and personal pain. The subject is never just the face or the person, but a tension between image, identity, culture, and manipulation. The compositing becomes a way to overlay these tensions visually.

Formally, his pieces lean heavily on collage techniques and digital compositing in tools like Adobe Photoshop, mixing photographic elements, found imagery, typography, and texture. You’ll notice layered transparencies, bold contrasting color fields, grainy textures, glitch-like distortions, and the repetition of motifs (eyes, hands, faces). His typography is integrated not as a caption but as texture: slogans aligned with the face, often at odd angles, becoming part of the image rather than separate. The formal “look” is fragmented, kinetic, and deliberately imperfect. Grain, rough edges, collage tears, or digital glitch marks all give a sense of rawness, of the constructed rather than seamless.

Conceptually, Alamaniotis is working at the intersection of culture (music, identity, subcultures), image economy (merchandise, album covers), and personal expression (archive work that feels more introspective). The compositing technique itself mirrors the thematic idea: the self (face) is fragmented, overlayed by culture (typography, sub-graphics), obscured by texture (grain, glitch), and reconstructed through layers. In this sense, the form reflects the concept: identity is built through layering, collage, historical references, and raw aesthetic. The use of heavy contrast, glitch, and repetition speaks to themes of alienation, multiplicity of selves, and the visual consumption of identity. His choice of strong cultural references (punk graphics, 80s pop, global music subcultures) further emphasizes this.

For my “Under the Influence” project, I plan to draw inspiration from his textured collage works, utilizing elements like torn paper, textural overlays, and repetition of elements. A majority of his works only include one subject, often in a portrait setting, but I want to add my own spin by introducing multiple subjects and having more candid photos. I want my works to tell a story through my different compositions and utilize the image treatments as a way to add deeper layers of emotion to the overall theme.

Portfolio: https://www.christosjpeg.com/