From the crude photomontages of the early 20th century Dadaists, to the Xerox photocopier collage art of the 1980s, artists have been playing with blending disparate found images into new pieces for over a century. Of course, the advent of Photoshop has undeniably changed the game, making it easier than ever for someone to mash up multiple images into a new thing. German artist Justin Peter is continuing that artistic tradition, using digital technology to take stock photo images and create impressively surreal results.
Just two years ago, Peters began toying with Photoshop. Inspired by YouTube tutorials and stock footage, Peters quickly became enamored by how easy it was to quickly blend two disparate images together, and began his journey into the world of surrealist art.
Digital technology has undeniably made it easier than ever to artificially manipulate images in creative ways, so what makes exceptional art stand out nowadays is the unique conceptual creativity that inspires a work. Peters' photo manipulations excel due to his magnificent ability to see two starkly different images and find exceptionally exciting ways to fuse them together.
Back in the 1920s, Andre Breton penned an early manifesto outlining the revolutionary goal of surrealism as a movement. Breton suggested the aim of the aesthetic was to, "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality."
At its best, Peters' work achieves this surrealist goal perfectly, with his photo-realistic juxtapositions generating impressively discordant combinations of images. From a jellyfish merging with the Moon to a whale melding into the Milky Way, these images are far from simply random combinations of disparate things. Instead, these visual mash-ups offer thoughtful, resonant and often gorgeous tableaus.
Take a look through the gallery for a trip through the surreal imagination of Justin Peters.
Source: Justin Peters