Simen Johan – Room to Play

Simen Johan creates surreal and narrative tableaux of corrupted youth. His images of children and adolescents are constructed by digitally manipulating and combining parts of faces and bodies belonging to people of various ethnicities, ages, and genders.

His fictional identities are depicted in equally fabricated scenarios that are replete with references to both the art historical tradition and Freudian sexuality.

The poster-perfect finish of his prints belies the disturbing nature of their content; a pubescent girl hula hoops against an idyllic seaside backdrop, as the hoop leaves bruises on her waist; an androgynous teenager cradles the head of a dead sheep on which flies are beginning to land.

“Simen Johan’s … pictures continue to plumb a troubled dream world where fantasy and ritual meet. In virtually all of these images, solitary, self-possessed youngsters appear to be engaged in bizarre masquerades… There’s an edge of horror and derangement in these photos that’s all the more disturbing because it seems as much a projection of the child’s imagination as the photographer’s.”
Vincent Aletti (Village Voice, New York)

Hardcover
96 pages
33 x 30 cm