Matthew Bradley (b.1992) grew up in the town of Vyeboom, South Africa. With a background in graphic design and curatorship, he later began experimenting with photography and the ways in which images can tell truths or lies. He currently lives and works in Cape Town.
“I use photography as a medium to capture and construct an ongoing series of images to create and imagine uncanny scenarios extracted from my own reality. The way that I make and sequence my photographs is done so that it might give the appearance of a ‘natural’ world, yet on closer inspection will begin to reveal slight imperfections and impossibilities that blur the lines between what is considered authentic and what is a manipulation.” – Matthew Bradley
Bradley’s vast collection of photographic work explores an overlap between the real and the manipulated. His photographs play with the perception of the viewer, occasionally tricking their eye to believe that something is authentic while it has been entirely constructed. We recognize subtle manipulations, which then forces us to retract, look again and question if everything we are observing is indeed unauthentic. Some of Bradley’s manipulations of household objects and natural landscapes are so hard to distinguish that we begin second guessing images we previously perceived as true. There is an obvious play between the relationship of the hidden and the revealed, making the act of looking at Bradley’s photographs a game in which an audience must detect concealed imperfections. His work lends itself to the illusions often achieved by photography, except in this case, through digital manipulations–clone stamping, cut and paste, and repetition. Each photograph is motivated by the possibilities in which an image can be morphed or changed post-camera and the subtle ways they can be falsely perceived.
To see more of Bradley’s work, make sure to check out his website.