Art News and Updates from Gallereo

Label: fantasy

Wednesday 16th April 2014Foregoing Photoshop: The Work of JeeYoung Lee

Perhaps the strangest result of the era of digital imagery is the effect it has had on the photograph. When photography was originally developed, it was easily the most precise of the possible methods to reproduce a particular object or scene with near-scientific accuracy. There were still ways to manipulate perception of the image, and even some fairly sophisticated optical illusions, but for the most part, photographs were regarded as reliable documentation, free of the artist license inherently given to painters and other artists. All this would change.

Enter the world of the digital photograph. With even the most basic training in Photoshop or similar image editing programs, the average person is capable of creating a photographic composite that is a complete fabrication, all while looking real. This creates an interesting blurring of the lines between photography and painting, since painting with pixels that look photo-realistic is still painting. As a result, some artists have expressed a deep frustration with the ease of creation of fantastical landscapes and scenes.

One such artist is JeeYoung Lee, who works out of a small studio in Seoul, South Korea. The studio really is small, measuring just 3 x 6 meters, but the scenes she constructs within it are anything but. Instead of using Photoshop and other digital methods to create her fantastical works, she takes the time to actually construct the scenes in her studio by hand. Some of the results are more successful than others, but the ones that do succeed are truly incredible, and are made even more so by her talented handicraft.

In a world of ersatz people where everyone and everything is airbrushed to within an inch of its life, it's refreshing to see a talented artist deliberately defying the conventions of a digitally fabricated reality in favour of actual construction. As both artist, photographer, set designer and model, Lee has a degree of intimacy in her photography that isn't always apparent in the works of others, and the fact that many of her scenes are depictions of her life, whether memories of childhood or dreams of fear, only serves to reinforce the personally cathartic nature of her work. Regardless of your opinion of her current pieces, she's definitely an emerging talent that should be watched closely as she develops, sans Photoshop.

To see a gallery of some of Lee's most popular works, check out the selection here.

Image shown above is 'Treasure Hunt', by JeeYoung Lee.

Posted on April 16th 2014 on 06:28pm
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Labels: art, artists, fantasy, photography, photoshop, realism

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