Eric Vondy

I took up photography in 2003 several months after moving back to Arizona. I was born and raised in Arizona and having not been to many places I took it for granted so when I moved back I began to document it. Over the years documenting turned into something different and spread beyond the boundaries of Arizona.

My drift from realistic photography began when I was screwing around in Photoshop and found that people were more interested in a manipulated photo then the realistic version of the same photo. Over the next year, my style evolved.

I call these photographs Dreamsc...

I took up photography in 2003 several months after moving back to Arizona. I was born and raised in Arizona and having not been to many places I took it for granted so when I moved back I began to document it. Over the years documenting turned into something different and spread beyond the boundaries of Arizona.

My drift from realistic photography began when I was screwing around in Photoshop and found that people were more interested in a manipulated photo then the realistic version of the same photo. Over the next year, my style evolved.

I call these photographs Dreamscapes. In truth I think of them more as digital art than photography. To me they evoke dream like qualities. Some people find them disturbing or haunting, I find them, for the most part, to be peaceful and comforting. Others have called them soulful and said that they each tell a story. I rarely set out to tell a story in a photo so any deeper meaning is the viewers own interpretation.

Most of the dreamscapes aren’t staged. I simply capture what is happening and then manipulate it. I used to view humans in these dreamscapes as being like humans in architectural drawings: there to represent scale or emphasize that an area is pedestrian friendly. Now that’s evolving into something where the human, now an abstract everyman, is experiencing something and we, the observer, are watching this unfold from the distance as if it were a spectator sport. However, it is up to the viewer to take meaning.

The technique for creating these involves layering different photos on top of each other and blending them together in Photoshop. Usually this involves a base photo (for example, a boy looking at the sea) with one or two texture photos (a rusted fence, a rain streaked window, stucco, a dusty car hood, etc...) placed upon it. It is blended together and then taken into an effects program where it is further manipulated.

My favorite photographers people like Yusef Karsh, Weegee, Julius Shulman, and Samuel Gottscho. Clearly, their style and mine are about as far apart as can be, however, their work is as fantastical and alien to me as my dreamscapes.