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Chris Engman’s Illusionary Photographs Transform Indoor Spaces

Chris Engman brings nature into indoor environments with a meticulous process of placing sections of a photograph across different sections of a room, establishing one unifying image by the end using the unnatural contours. Recent work lets enough of the containing space slip through so that the landscape and the manmade structures show through.

Chris Engman brings nature into indoor environments with a meticulous process of placing sections of a photograph across different sections of a room, establishing one unifying image by the end using the unnatural contours. Recent work lets enough of the containing space slip through so that the landscape and the manmade structures show through.

“Engman works with photographs as objects in physical space, scaling them to fit into the confines of a constructed environment,” a statement says. “A mass of photographic images is meticulously transferred to the material surfaces of a space-covering the walls, ceiling, floor, and everything in between-then photographed from one single vantage point. The result is a ‘straight’ photograph of a manipulated existence, a fabricated reality that feels incredibly real. The logic of the two spaces overlaps, sometimes agreeing and sometimes colliding. A photograph, here and by analogy, tries and fails to be a container for moments and places.”

See more of Engman’s work below.

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