Jan von holleben photography backdrops
Photo Adventures
Thames & Hudson Ltd. / 2018 (English - also available in Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Latvian)
„Photo Adventures is an activity book by photographer and professional fun-maker Jan von Holleben, who reveals the secret to bending reality using nothing more than a smartphone and a playful approach. With the aid of props lying about the house, and a generous dose of imagination, children will discover how to fly like a superhero by turning the ground into the sky; create a ‘brain portrait’ of what’s hiding in their heads by re-photographing an existing photo; put their parents up a pole using tricks of perspective; devise an impossible pinball machine by combining some junk with a tight picture crop; and transform siblings into one-eyed, three-legged monsters with only a mirror and a sharp camera angle!
Featuring pro tips and secret tricks from von Holleben, whose trademark photos fill the book with energy, colour and creative inspiration, Photo Adventures shows that there’s more to photography than tech wizardry or applying a filter. Using just a camera phone or basic digital camera, Jan’s addictively playful projects are readily accessible, not to mention enormous fun, for the whole family.“
“I once ruled the worlds. Not just one, but many,” writes Jan von Holleben, an award-winning photographer based in Berlin. “I ruled them with mirrors and lenses. I ruled them with light and shadow and time. Sometimes I ruled with a trick of the eye. Through my camera, an entire cosmos took shape, and each world within it seemed to operate by a certain unfamiliar logic, like a sort of magical clockwork.”
Jan plays with our sense of space and perception. Most of his photographs are shot indoors. The floor turns into the sky or the sea. Ordinary objects like shoes and books and balls are strategically positioned into dreamy and adventurous compositions. Children are seen busting ghosts, discovering treasure chests, riding bikes over rocky terrain. Lines of white cups become the teeth of a dragon, yellow and red strips of cloth the fire of its mouth. Candy-coloured and enchanting, these photographs are more creative and entertaining than most material executed with digital special effects. In the way that it seamlessly blends fantasy with reality, Jan’s work is very much reminiscent of the production design found in the movies of the French filmmaker Michel Gondry – particularly in his hilarious The Science of Sleep (2006) starring Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
The photographer was born in 1977. He grew up in the countryside of southern Germany. Inspired by his father’s photographic career, he picked up a camera at the age of 13. After pursuing studies in the teaching of children with disabilities at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Freiburg, Jan moved to London and earned a degree in the Theory and History of Photography at Surrey Institute of Art and Design. His artistry is heavily influenced by his pedagogical background. The human person is often depicted as a figure who gains knowledge and wisdom by way of fun and play.
Jan’s favourite collaborators, he says, are: “his friends and any pira
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I love, love LOVE this series of photographs by photographer (or artist!) Jon von Holleben entitled ‘Dreams of Flying’, where he has tried to re-create scenes from famous films, children’s books and of course, his own imagination.
I love how fun these pictures look, and how simple they all are, there’s no special effects or over-the-top, expensive props, just a re-defining of space and perspective which work well enough to really make you almost believe that you can fly : )
Something I’ll have to try out for myself, I think (I’ll be using some small family members to volunteer, of course!)
All images belong to Jon von Holleben
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