A great photo can immerse viewer into the sensations and feelings of the photo’s scene, but how about literally stepping inside a photo? Artist Chris Engman transports natural landscapes such as waterfalls, caves, and vast deserts to domestic interiors by securing large-scale photographs to the room’s walls, ceilings, and floors. To create such installation, hundreds of individual photos are actually used. Once one enters the work its believability as a singular landscape becomes penetrated. Each step deeper inside the work makes the photographed landscape appear increasingly warped and unreal.
“Even so,” says Engman, “compared to a singular framed photograph the experience of this installation for the viewer is much more physical and immersive. The structure is a room, not an image of a room. The photograph is an object, in addition to being an illusion. It has weight, and volume, and changes as you walk around it. Making this installation has been a thrilling process, and this new way of working seems to afford many new possibilities.”
“Containment” (detail) (2018), photo by Tony Walsh
“Containment” (detail) (2018), photo by Tony Walsh
“Containment” (2015), Digital pigment print, 43 x 58 inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
“Landscape for Quentin” (2017), Digital pigment print, 43 x 55½ inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
“Refuge” (2016), Digital pigment print, 43 x 53 inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
“Equivalence” (2017), Digital pigment print, 43 x 55½ inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles