To inspire submissions to our new Creative Brief with Alamy, we spoke to collage artist Yagiz Erdogmus about how he and his girlfriend Ola Chrzastowska create beautiful, surreal collages mixing mediums of illustration and photography. Images like this would be brilliant to submit to the brief, as well as to the EyeEm Marketplace!
Hi Yagiz! Tell us about the inspiration behind your gorgeous image collages.
My girlfriend and I started making these collages together as part of our quest to document our travels. We both love travelling very much and try to travel to new places as much as we can. A trip to Vietnam inspired us to create a collage image of what we'd seen, eaten, drank, felt and experienced there. In most cases, we try to reflect a retro-futuristic feel in our work.
What tools and software do you use to create your work?
We only use Adobe Photoshop. Honestly we had no idea how to use it when we embarked upon this journey! We watched a lot of tutorials on YouTube and by trial and error we gradually upped our skills. Since we're hobbyists and not professionals, we're not using the tool every day, so we also keep a document of the skills we've learnt so that we can look back at them the next time we're creating.
Your images feature a lot of fruit as the sun, which works really well.
Since we're mostly doing the collages inspired by our travels, sun is always one of the most essential elements that we'd like to recall in our memories, and therefore feature in our work. Fruits do a stellar job to vividly depict the sun as a metaphor, so we try to experiment this method by trying out different color palettes, fruits and filters every time.
The mix of photography and illustration is so compelling and surreal, what is it that you like about this medium?
I've always been very much drawn to surreal art, be it in the form of a painting, a film or a photograph. Surreal collages stood out as the opportunity to actually turn this passion into a concrete piece of work, by fusing my aesthetic view with the type of theme I'm trying to illustrate. Together with my girlfriend, we love creating psychedelic content creating harmony between objects that are normally unimaginable together. It's fun to defy a sense of reality while still appealing to the eye thanks to the colors and interactions in the collage. I also love the endless possibilities that can be created with the combinations of myriad effects, colors and filters, and how provocative and satisfying the result can be.
Which Alamy collections do you think your images fit into, and why?
Our work could fit into Ultimate or Uncut - those more in the realm of travel can fit into Ultimate, whereas those with a more raw flavor could fit into Uncut.
Which other artists do you think are doing great work in this space?
I really love the works by Collage Soul, Frank Moth, Karen Lynch, Caitlyn Grabenstein, Elliot Canton Ilopis
How can we find more of your work, do you have Instagram or a portfolio website?
At the moment we only have an Instagram page - https://www.instagram.com/intergalactic.travels/
If Yagiz's work with his girlfriend has inspired you to get creative, check out the Creative Brief here!
