Photographer Research - Erik Johansson

Erik Johansson is a Swedish surrealist photographer born in 1985, he always tries to capture as much of the idea in camera because "no one can tell you it doesn't look realistic if you captured it for real" he does of course use photoshop to complete the vision of the idea but none of the things in his image are computer generated or stock photos, everything in his work is made up of of pictures he took. He does both personal and commissioned projects. He is an ambassador for camera maker Hasselblad so he uses a Hasselblad H6D-50C and uses a Profoto lighting system to get his photos. The Hasselblad cameras are extremely high quality cameras with his particular model having a 50MP medium format sensor.

I really like Erik's work because it's something refreshing and wondrous in the world of photography where all you really see nowadays are just the same things over and over, landscapes of a pretty place, portraits of a pretty person, macros of a flower or a bug. Now, there's nothing wrong with these pictures, they are still very pretty but images like Erik's are something extremely creative and they look so realistic that you could believe they are real, you could believe that you are looking at a picture of some secret, inner working of earth that no one had seen before, and that's the cool part about surrealistic art, you get a glimpse of a world that exists only in the mind of the artist and it really changes your perspective and inspires new ideas, for me it makes me feel this sort of rush of wonder and creativity, like when you're a little kid and you go out on a dark night and see the sky full of millions of stars, it just gets you thinking about what can be seen and imagined. And that's why I chose this photographer for my research, he does a great job of portraying his creativity and his ideas through his images and all the hard work he puts in to it is inspiring as well, I barely just found Erik's work but seeing the crazy images already made a big impact on me, the creativity and realism reminded me of all the amazing work that can be done with hard work and a bit of creativity, is work gave me a boost of energy and inspiration to go create something new, unique, and creative.  

Some of Erik's work: