Surface N° 2

Contemporary photography is characterised by strong contrasts. In digital media, image production is characterised by repetition and transience. Professional visual art, however – created with very high standards – is concerned with originality of authorship and permanence. But for both approaches, hyperrealism has become a benchmark.

Digital filters and editing tools are constantly being improved, making mass photography snapshots look like high-end works of art. But photographers, who hold on to the value of an individual image, create a hyperrealistic rendering of the world through attention to great detail – with precise motif choice and thought-through compositions as the distinguishing factors. Their artistic treatment has the goal of deepening the content of the image, making several hidden layers visible to the eye and, in effect, creating an artwork that is even more realistic than reality.

Hyperrealism describes the portrayal of something that aims to be “realer than real” – the exaggerated image of an existing object that unravels its minute details and normally imperceptible facets. Reality and fiction seamlessly blend together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins.