
Andy Chalmers
(he / him)
My aim for this work is to question when it is that an image is no longer photography, and why we don’t consider entirely computer generated images to be part of it even though it is possible to create images that can pass for ‘real’ by employing a photographic process within a virtual world.
Spending most of third year in lockdown, I conducted my degree project virtually, using the ‘photo mode’ to capture screenshots in a video game called Red Dead Redemption 2.
I started the project capturing images that were elaborately cinematic and implied a narrative, but these only displayed the same experience that anyone else would have in the game. So, I went looking for subjects far from the focal point intended by the developers, and it’s in the images of these background elements that the line between the virtual and the real-world vernacular begins to blur.
Stump
Even in a virtual world, not everything is perfect. This broken tree stump stands out among the other algorithmically varied trees making up the landscape.
Reflections
A line of trees, barely illuminated by moonlight, stand at the very edge of a lake and cast ghostly reflections into the rippling water.
Sticks
A handful of dead branches and leaves are scattered in a heap on the ground of a forest clearing, highlighted by a faint amount of sunlight piercing through the trees above.
Hills
A sprawling landscape of hills and mountains is coated in thick layer of snow, which remains undisturbed except for a narrow path leading up to the camera.