surreal photomanipulation by erik johansson

 
surreal photomanipulation by erik johansson
all images courtesy of erik johansson

as a professional still-life photographer, erik johansson has worked with brands such as adobe, google, microsoft, volvo, and national geographic — but you will probably recognize him from the personal work that he frequently shares online: the swedish photoshop artist and story teller’s distorted reality compositions.

johansson is based in berlin, germany. he picked up his interest for retouching while studying computer engineering. he is as much a photographer as a retoucher which enables him to create almost anything that you can imagine. having an understanding of each step of the process gives him total control of the whole work process from sketch to final image to ensure a high quality realistic result. stock photos don’t really work for him, as he wants to have almost the same perspective in every of his images, a similar light atmosphere. that is why he shoots them all on purpose. often he combines more than two photos together.

breaking up

‘walk a way’ is his newest work

leaving home

closing out

see the making of ‘closing out’, where he shares layer-by-layer breakdowns of the work

cut and fold

go your own road

landfall

see the making of landfall

common sense crossing

arms break vases don’t

an anamorphic illusion erik made for volvo at the main station in zürich