With the photographic series Mirror World, South African Johannesburg-based artist Elsa Bleda explores the beauty and magnetism of Istanbul’s night city lights.
There is a haunting quality to Elsa’s work, a kind of dystopian, digital emulsion, pronounced through distant angles, the buzz of neon-nowhere, and what remains after the long-exposure. When I spoke with her, she told me about the intensity of her dreams, how they find her in the deep clutch of night and extend into her waking hours. The impossible things that are nonetheless known through the complexities of human experience; mysterious realities conjured against the florescent-glare of the world as it pretends to be. Elsa weaves this elusive imagery into her cinematic aesthetic, blurs the divisions between different worlds, and evokes the imagination of her viewer; more than you can gather to fathom through the strict breath of glass and a billow of curtains.
Elsa Bleda
More info: Website, Behance, Facebook, Instagram.
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