Saturday, January 10, 2009

Instant image Unreal

Yet another form of photography, called tilt shift photography that makes the real photograph look like plastic models. As much as I like it I also get a bit scared of how today, with everything possible the product is no longer a reflection of technological evolution or artistic development, but different aesthetics of imagery have been reduced to fetishized styles of personal indulgences. Like interior designers providing the client ideas for houses as sincere reflections of the clients personality through appropriation of classicism, art deco, regionalism etc.
Parallel to this I also happened to discover 'Steam Punk', a science fiction sub genre, especially within product and graphic design that imagines an alternative development of the present future based on industrial Victorian aesthetics, where language of technology and machines has been developed by steam power. But in this as well the adoption of aesthetics is somewhat synonymous to the skins of steel, glass, optic cables, stone tiles etc that our environments are getting clad in. I can imagine architects like Herzog de Meuron (no offence to them or their fans, I love their work) going through an array of cladding materials in the manner of a pernickety fashion designer, desperately trying to form a language. The tool of perception or design of cities after having passed through ages of perspectives and axonometrics has finally come to be a flat all surveying google earth jpeg, or set of arrows on direction guiding GPS device.

(Below are some of my own photo examples of tilt shift photography, which of course have been achieved through photoshop as the lens is extremely expensive.)