Seung Woo Back
Frankly speaking, looking at real/faux miniature macro images proliferating everywhere has been a rather tiring experience. Nothing new is presented and one easily gets lost in the technicalities.
Enter Korean photographer Seung Woo Back’s Real World series.
TOP TO BOTTOM, from (“Real World“)
© Seung Woo Back, 2004
Taken at Aiins World theme park in South Korea, these images feature the scaled-down models of world attractions. Confusion sets in when the viewer sees Korean junk bloats floating next to New York’s cityscape, in which he describes as “staged borders of ambiguity”.
View more of this series here and here . His other works can be seen here.
I can’t seem to recall similar work by other photographers, would appreciate if someone could help me jog my memory in the comments. Thanks!
Check out the pic on my homepage!
You may also be thinking of Naoya Hatakeyama’s “Scales,” shot at Tobu World Square, or maybe the Zhang Ke Jia movie “The World” which was set in Beijing World Park.
not sure if you remember them… http://photolog.blog.so-net.ne.jp/
The bitter girls from japan, their latest experiment involves combining the olympus pen with canon TS lenses…
Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Scales and Maquettes/Light really stand out for me in this area. I have just come back from the Rencontres d’Arles and with the guest curator, Nan Goldin’s, fairly narrow selection of guests, Hatakeyama’s thoughtful, inquisitive and questioning work was very refreshing. The Maquettes/Light pieces have to be seen in person: they are superimpositions of a silver-gelatin print and a transparency placed on a lightbox… something your computer screen is not going to be able to render.
There is also Naoki Honjo‘s tilt-shift book, Small Planet.
Wow, what a great blog! How much there is to discover in Asian photography….! Thanks, man!
@nguan eye curious posted a review of Hatakeyama’s Scales on his website: http://www.eyecurious.com/review-naoya-hatakeyama-rencontres-darles/
@marvin thanks for the link. been awhile since I saw their work.
@marc thanks for the links too! good stuff there.
@bjoern that sure made my day. :)
i still think that the tilt-shift technique has been done to death though!