Representations: Photographs of Everyday Objects Made to Look Like Drawings

For some reason we’re fascinated by photographs of real things made to look like drawings or paintings. Series like Alexander Khokhlov’s 2D or Not 2D and pretty much Alexa Meade’s entire portfolio are great examples of this.

Now we have another similar series to share with you. Created by artist Cynthia Greig, Representations is a series of photographs of everyday objects that have been white washed and outlined so that they look like very simple drawings.

On her website, she explains how the photographs are created (and no, there is no digital manipulation involved):

I start by collecting everyday objects from the recent past — things made obsolete by technological changes and time; I then whitewash them with ordinary house paint as a method of erasure, and then draw directly onto their surfaces with charcoal to create visual hybrids that appear to vacillate between drawing and photography, black-and-white and color, signifier and signified, copy and original. No digital manipulation is involved, but the camera’s monocular point of view is imperative.

Here’s a selection of images from the series:

For Greig, the series is “a kind of playful homage to William Henry Fox Talbot’s treatise, The Pencil of Nature.” By combining drawing and photography, she’s created what she calls, “photographic documents of three-dimensional drawings.”

To learn more about the drawings and/or browse through many more of the photographs, head over to Greig’s website by clicking here.

(via Laughing Squid)

Image credits: Photographs by Cynthia Greig and used with permission