Frank Kunert

There’s an element of trickery in Frank Kunert’s work and it can sometimes take you a moment to work out what is exactly wrong with the scene you’re looking at. But the process behind them is completely honest – Frank painstakingly makes the models by hand and then photographs the results – what you see is what you get.

About ten years ago, the photographer decided he wanted to create these dioramas which question and gently lampoon modern society, its confidence and its searing insecurity. He had to teach himself the ins and outs of model making and admits:” There was – and still is – a learning by doing.”

He has since completed nearly 50 of the pieces, which ca take anywhere between three weeks and two months to perfect – Frank admits that he is obsessive about getting every detail just right before finally getting his camera out.

His shows tend to exhibit both parts of the process: “In most of the exhibitions I try to have a combination. The main thing is showing the photographs, but I always try to show the original models or segments of my miniatures.”

And just as the work blurs the boundary between the actual and the photographic, so too do the reaction blur the boundary between humour and slight discomfort. 

“I find it interesting if there are different levels of looking at the works. Sometimes funny and unsettling things aren’t far away from each other. Life is absurd enough.”

(Found via TodayandTomorrow)