These Collages Blur the Lines of Reality

Daniel Gordon is an artist and author living and working in Brooklyn. His collage work is the subject of three books Still Lifes, Portraits, and Parts (Mörel, 2013), Flowers and Shadows (Onestar Press, 2011) and Flying Pictures (powerHouse Books, 2009) and a profile this week on Wired.

Daniel Gordon’s photos put viewers on the slope of an uncanny valley, a glitch between the real and the fabricated. In place of authentic objects, Gordon uses printed photos of the items folded to mimic their real-world appearance, creating a mockery of the original object in beautifully constructed collages.

“I like photographs that aren’t just one thing,” says Gordon, “that are complicated, with blurred lines between themes such as the grotesque and the beautiful, humor and terror, wholeness and fragmentation, or innocence and corruption.”

In the series Still Lifes, Portraits and Parts, the elements of the foreground and background are carefully constructed from printed images. The lighting is meticulously arranged to relate with the printed textures. This adds realism that is immediately betrayed by a deliberately misaligned facet, or an inverted choice of color scheme. Backgrounds often are flattened in a dizzying array of colors and materials, cast upon by objects’ eerie neon shadows. It’s a balancing act between truth and invention that informs the entire series.

Read the full profile on Wired