Through his black and white images, Jim Kazanjian aims to redress the “misunderstanding that photography has a kind of built-in objectivity…to defamiliarize the familiar.” He pushes photography to its limits, tricking the human eye and challenging viewers to second-guess the objective nature of photos.

Kazanjian might be considered a master of appropriation. He doesn’t actually shoot any of his own pictures, but chooses to express himself by manipulating assemblages of photographs – thousands of them in fact, to find one that offers the correct snippet of information to be transformed into a completely new reality with other found photographs.

The final effect is at once confusing – wait, is there really a house on a mound somewhere like that? – and also fantastical, culling influence from those wild and theatrical, like author H.P. Lovecraft.

In exposing the impossible through images that at first glance might just be possible, Kazanjian reminds us to take nothing at face value and embrace a reality we’d like to see.

More from Jim Kazanjian at  www.kazanjian.net

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