Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Petey Ulatan’s Digital Photo Manipulations of Cubic Landscapes

Honolulu, Hawaii based photographer and designer Petey Ulatan often creates images that explore the impossible. A recent series, which Ulatan posts to his Instagram page, takes this idea and applies it to infinite scenarios: digital photo-manipulations of his own photographs from his travels, others from Google images, that re-shape the world as if it were folded into a giant cube.

Honolulu, Hawaii based photographer and designer Petey Ulatan often creates images that explore the impossible. A recent series, which Ulatan posts to his Instagram page, takes this idea and applies it to infinite scenarios: digital photo-manipulations of his own photographs from his travels, others from Google images, that re-shape the world as if it were folded into a giant cube.

“I like to describe myself as a photographer with a graphic designer’s heart. I’ve been designing since I could pick up a pencil and taking photographs for as long as I remember,” Ulatan shares. It should come as no surprise that Ulatan is a fan of science fiction films and minimalist architecture, whose images resemble Inception’s mind-bending dream landscapes, or the thematic perspectives in Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

What began as a fun experiment took Ulatan several months to perfect, discovering how simple changes can alter our perception of the picture entirely. “For some images, I would mask out the sky and add another layer of another photo of a sky to create the illusion that it’s coming from one world.” Some of his most astonishing images are of surfers riding up an epic tidal wave, or the inverted skylines of actual cities. Each involves a subtle play on reflection and symmetry, elements from our reality turned into a lucid dream world.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
French born artist Liz Brizzi held her first solo exhibition with Thinkspace Gallery (previewed here) on Saturday. “Adrift” continues her experimentation with urban landscapes in the form of painting and photo collage. This time, Brizzi went to Asia in search of inspiration. “I’ve always loved Japan. I went there with this exhibition in mind, with a plan in my head to create my own version of it,” shared Brizzi on opening night. Among the cities represented in Brizzi’s new work are Roppongi, Tokyo and the Damnoen Saduak floating marketplace in Thailand. Seemingly uninhabited, her work celebrates the architectural design and essence of a place long after we’re gone.
Antony Crossfield, an artist based in London, manipulates his photographs to create new ways of looking at our natural forms. Series like “Second Skin” take the outer shell of the human body and pushes it outside of the boundaries of superficiality. It’s in these exercises that Crossfield aims to “to present the body not as a protective envelope that defines and unifies our limits, but as an organ of physical and psychical interchange between bodies.”
There's something ridiculously satisfying about looking at Lernert & Sander's latest photography project. The Dutch duo cut various types of foods — from raw tuna to kiwis to Romanesco broccoli — into perfect, bite-sized cubes and arranged everything in a meticulously planned-out grid. The piece includes 98 total cubes measuring two-and-a-half cubic centimeters each. The photo was originally commissioned by a Dutch newspaper for their food issue, but has gone viral internationally since its release.
After singing for a rock band, working as a tattooist, and modeling for Playboy, Russian artist Anka Zhuravleva settled behind the lens. Her photography vacillates between a surrealistic and editorial aesthetic, although, it seems, that she cooks up pieces that resonates with both. With soft, painterly yet obscure visuals, the photographer puts forth a collection of imagery that drives the viewer inside a feminine dream world in which girls and women in anachronistic costumes fly and float among sublime, hazy landscapes.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List