Olivo Barbieri

Italian born Olivo Barbieri practices a very unique style of photography through his use of a tilt-shift lens and a helicopter. At first glance his images appear to be of small super detailed models but are actually real life cityscapes that when shot with a tilt-shift lens become very toy like. The incredibly shallow depth of field and altered perspective tricks the eye causing the scale of the image to become questionable. Barbieri is an artist that works with post 9/11 themes, in this case our perception of reality and the false security that Americans had pre 9/11.

The idea of a photograph causing the viewer to question weather reality is being depicted or not is a theme that I have been exploring a lot lately. I've done several artist bloggs about this topic with out even realizing it, so clearly it is a interesting and important topic to me. In a world where everyone has a camera and the image is the main source of information and truth I think the role of the artist to upset this way of thinking and challenge the validity of images is an important one. Since images saturate the media, web and basically our daily life it is important for artists like Barbieri to present an alternate view and cause us to think twice about what it is that we see, in all aspects of our lives.