Pocko People | Simen Johan's Portfolio

Simen Johan
In his photographs, Simen Johan explores darkly the human proclivity towards fantasy and our attempts, knowing or otherwise, to craft alternate realities for ourselves. Merging traditional photographic techniques with digital methods, Johan creates each of his images from as many as one hundred negatives, having first constructed or discovered each element and photographed it on film. Across his body of work, the viewer is urged to ponder the relationship between the real and the artificial or imagined. In his most recent images, from the series Until the Kingdom Comes, Johan depicts animals in scenarios where their actions or demeanor mirror human conventions. The images allude to our inclination to anthropomorphize and domesticate what we see and find around us, and they speak to realms of emotion, our fears and desires, rather than reason. Simen Johan's work has been widely exhibited internationally, and is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Cleveland Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and other major institutions. Johan's first monograph, Room to Play, was published by Twin Palms in 2003. Born in Norway and raised in Sweden, Johan earned his B.F.A at the School of Visual Arts, in New York, where he currently resides.
1.snake

2.buffalo

3.albino-deer

4.lamb

5.moose

6.bird

7.Flamingos

8.Owls

9.Mammoth

10.Lama

11.Foxes

12.Coyote

13.Bears

14.White Balloon

15.Web

16.Staircase

17.Transfixed

18.Skins 2

19.Sink

20.55 DSL 1

21.55 DSL 3

22.55 DSL 5

23.Redroom

24.Puppets

25.Doll Pile

26.Mask

27.Girl 1

28.Girl 3

29.Geese

30.Eggs

31.Cowboy

32.Cover Image 2

33.Cover Image 4

34.Cover Image 6

35.Boy On A Train

36.Boy Playing With Bugs

37.Bird In The Snow

38.Birthday Baby

We have joined forces with
Bill Charles, to explore the
boundaries of contemporary
photography and moving
image.