“Immersive Illusions”: Dazzling Photographic Art Installations By Chris Engman

If you’ve ever been so taken by an image, you wished you could step into it, then Chris Engman is the photographer for you. Literally. Intrigued by the idea that pictures were one dimensional and unable to be penetrated from a 3D perspective, Engman played with the idea of creating a three-dimensional experience.

The LA-based artist’s installations are the love child of his experiments with photography and architectural space. In his most recent work ‘Containment for the Fotofocus in Cincinnati’, viewers are able to walk inside the space. A lifelike forest with a stream rushing through, running over moss covered rocks, gurgling underneath the dense foliage above is an abstract representation of what it would feel like to be completely immersed within a photograph.

While originally the work is of a single photograph, it was created by more than three hundred individual images applied to a temporary structure. As one walks around the space the image changes, highlighting the abstract nature of the work. Viewing it from the different perspectives warps the space via volume and time, creating an immersive illusion.

“By illusion, I am referring broadly to the power we invest in photographs to tell us the truth about the world, to be a record of it, to capture moments,” he says.

More: Chris Engman h/t: yellowtrace