Photographer Kate Ballis Transforms Desert Landscapes Into Entirely Surreal Scenes That Straddle The Divide Between Saccharine And Sinister

Kate Ballis is a Melbourne-based fine art photographer creating unique, colour-drenched images using infrared technology. Seeing the unseen through this technological lens Ballis finds a foreign otherworldly quality in familiar landscapes and scenes.

Through her lens, the all-too-familiar visual tropes of life in the desert are cast in an entirely surreal light, one that somehow manages to straddle the divide between saccharine and sinister. A swimming pool turns blood red, the sky ablaze in a post-apocalyptic hue. The prickly spines of golden barrel cacti, yucca and Joshua tree are recast as plush ornaments strewn across a deep pile carpet dyed indigo.

Ballis released Infra Realism with Manuscript Publishing in 2017 profiling her photographs journeying through Palm Springs and Joshua Tree in California. Her work has been exhibited throughout Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Miami, and at various art fairs across Europe.

More: Kate Ballis, Instagram, Behance