Weekend Portfolio: Michael Jantzen

Fragmenting My World is a series of photomontages inspired by the idea that all matter is not actually solid in the conventional sense. This basic idea lead to thoughts in my mind of what things might look like if they were fragmented to a very large scale and separated by varying amounts of space between each fragmented piece. I found that in most cases, even with a large amount of fragmentation, the original object is still recognizable. I was also intrigued by (in most of the photos) the unexpected aesthetic relationship between the fragmented objects and the surroundings in which they were placed. I find the juxtaposition between the fragmented objects and the unaltered surroundings to be very intriguing in a surreal way, as though the objects and the surroundings exist in two different worlds.

In all cases, the original objects were photographed with a digital camera and placed into my computer. They were then isolated from their surrounds and fragmented by cutting the objects up into many small pieces, and separating each piece by varying distances. The fragmented objects were then rescaled and placed into various background photos that seemed to be most appropriate.

To find out more about Michael Jantzen’s work please click here.