Saturday, 26 April 2014

Tommy Ingberg

Tommy Ingberg


Tommy Ingberg was born in sweden in 1980 and is a self-taught photographer and visual artist. He works with photography and digital image editing, creating minimalistic and self-reflecting surreal photo montages which deal with human nature, feelings and thoughts.

Tommy leaves the interpretation of his work up to the viewers of his works but says in his artist for his series called "reality rearranged", "For me, surrealism is about trying to explain something abstract like a feeling or a thought, expressing the subconscious with a picture. The Reality Rearranged series is my first try at describing reality trough surrealism. During the two and a half years I have worked on the series I have used my own inner life, thoughts and feelings as seeds to my pictures. In that sense the work is very personal, almost like a visual diary. Despite this subjectiveness in the process I hope that the work can engage the viewer in her or his own terms. I want the viewers to produce their own questions and answers when looking at the pictures, my own interpretations are really irrelevant in this context. "
He has received international recognition and his work shown in numerous publications and receiving awards and honorable mentions from many different competitions including International Photography Awards.
Tommy has been creating since  he was a child. He's had  an early fascination with cameras. At some point he chose photography and ever since then he has been constantly photographing. However there was a point in Tommy's life where slowly and without really noticing it, he lost direction and began spiraling downwards until in his late twenties finally hit "some sort of bottom". 

 Deep down in his own personal "abyss" he found what art is for him. He started creating pictures. He stopped trying to make what others thought was “art” or “good photography” and made pictures just for himself.  By crossing that line he felt free to tell his stories, and by crossing the line from photography into photo montages he had the tools to do so.

In this he found something he loved doing and something he could be proud of. He found a purpose. It has not been an easy journey, life seldom is, but I’ve kept on climbing.He believes this is the awesome thing about life. Without the bad you can’t have the really good. He believes without living through the bad things, he would not have found his art.
This is his artist statement for his art series called; Solitaire

"Solitaire" is my second series of surreal pictures after "Reality Rearranged". In this series I keep exploring how to visualize abstract concepts like feelings or thoughts, how to express the subconscious with pictures. 

I think "Solitaire" is a suitable title for this kind of work. The stuff that goes on inside your mind, like your thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams and decision-making are something that in its essence is yours alone. It is a game you play by yourself, like a game of solitaire. 

Despite this I do think the concepts and thoughts born in self reflection are universal for all of us, we all carry the same set of feelings inside us, and we all in our own way search for answers, trying to make sense of life, the world and being. 
I want my pictures to connect to the viewer on this basic level and invite to reflection and I hope you can find something in them that in some way connects to your own game of solitaire.

Post by Jackie

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