SITUATIONS

Photographer: Laurel Johannesson

Laurel Johannesson explores physical tension and the psyche through photographic-based collages that alter coastlines and beaches into limbo-like spaces. ⁠Her work often takes place in or around water in site-specific locations and depicts uncanny juxtapositions between body and nature, realism and dream. A large part of her practice is devoted to documenting and altering enigmatic landscapes that seemingly exist beyond the scope of reality.

Laurel works across various mediums, including photography, digital collage and painting, as well as moving image and interactivity to create imagery that addresses our understanding of time and space.

Within her depictions, Laurel reinterprets our understanding of what it means to inhabit a liminal space and how lens-based imagery can break down the barriers of physical reality in favour of a psychological landscape.

Her current series, Situations, reveals figures in various poses in remote landscapes that veer between dream, myth, and memory. The remote landscapes offer a stage to address the relationships between possibility and limitation, solitude and expanse. ⁠The images evoke a sense of displacement and a desire to find a resting place in a world that seems increasingly fractured by anxiety and uncertainty.

​