Surrealist Photography, Dreaming and Imagination.

(Featured in Art Edit Magazine Issue 26 2020)

This work by Geoffrey Huang is a first of many photo surrealist works and is the rebirth of his surrealist photomedia art making style. Compositionally this piece is an image which is a fully constructed to look like a landscape and all the base images were shot by Huang on an 35mm film SLR Camera and then digitally composited blended and edited on photoshop.
Huang’s aesthetic when making digitally composited images is surrealist and this work is the first digitally composited work where Huang intentionally makes his work surrealist in appearance , as opposed to referring back to fine art photography or photo-surrealism he refers back to surrealist painting and compositionally this work is painterly and it shows when it comes to making digitally composited images.

Huang refers to artists such as David LaChapelle, René Magritte and Salvador Dalí and takes inspiration from these artists when making his surrealist photography works.

Conceptually, the work is surrealist and the process of how this work came together as a composition was very automated based on Geoffrey Huang’s imagination. The work ‘This Is So Real’ explores the human psychology and the act of dreaming. The work is a direct response to Huang’s inability to have imaginative dreams in his sleep and his desire to have those dreams. The work is embedded in hidden symbolism and meaning. Geoffrey Huang also created this work because it is a representation how he wishes he could dream.
As well as exploring the act of dreaming this work also explores the creative potential of the imagination. It is also representational work of Huang’s imagination, the creative potential of his imagination and also the more playful and humorous side of his personality which is reflected in his digitally composited works. It alludes to the artist’s longing for an escape into his imagination.

The choice of using analogue photography (to shoot the base photos) and to use digital editing to make it into a photograph is a very conscious choice. Photography is a medium that is known throughout the last 150 years to be a tool that captures real life and to document things realistically where a painting could not. By manipulating the photography medium Huang uses this medium to create a visual illusion to depict a representation of his imagination and his desire to dream. The use of the photograph to make makes the subject matter.