Erik Johansson: What Lies Beneath

Imagine a fish out of water and you’d probably think of a wet, scaly thing flapping about on the floor. Now look at Erik Johansson’s Fishy Island and you’ll see a whole new slant on the idea.

The image’s focus is on an oversized fish, just breaking the water to reveal its back, which is actually an island. Crazy, you’d think, but the Swedish photographer and retoucher has a knack for making this sort of thing look surprisingly normal. It’s a piece typical of his distinct portfolio. “Most of the ideas come from just looking at something then trying to think differently about it,” explains the 26-year-old, “but I always try to get a realistic result as if it could’ve been captured.”

Raised on a farm near the small Swedish town of Götene, the surrounding countryside became an influence for his photography when he received a digital camera at the age of 15. An avid drawer, the ideas were always there, but the camera added a new dimension to his thinking. “I wanted to do more with the photos and it was quite natural for me to create something original by manipulating the pictures.”

Churning out personal work while studying computer engineering, requests from Gothenburg ad agencies began to flood in and since finishing his studies last year, he’s been freelancing full time, producing both commissioned and personal projects. “It always starts with a sketch and I always try to carry a notepad,” explains Johansson. “The planning is the most important thing really and it makes a difference.

Personal projects don’t have the deadline, so I like to leave them for a week or so and come back to them with a fresh, new idea.” He adds that the timescale of a particular project can range from a week to a few years and the deadlines for commissioned work can be tough if, for example, he has to scout out a location.

Johansson’s personal work features everything from a view from his window of a rather interesting game of noughts and crosses in Roadworker’s Coffee Break (see page 3), to something completely fabricated as in Revelation Fields (see page 4), which presents his sister’s head in a less than flattering but very artistic way.

“Usually it’s coming up with the idea and then finding locations but this (Roadworker’s Coffee Break) was the other way round. I saw these people on the street and I thought it’d be fun to do something with the scene somehow.” And persuading those close to him to feature is often a regular part of the production process, too: “For personal projects I tend to use friends and family and people I know. It’s easier to talk to them about really crazy ideas,” says Johansson, who encourages feedback, maintaining that it’ll only help him improve in his work.

If he could, he admits that he’d only create personal projects, but he has recently signed for representation with Mind’s Eye, who are hoping to develop his work on the film side and have been setting up meetings with post production firms.

“A few of the ideas I get sometimes [feel as though] they should be captured with moving images,” he explains. Considering his unique style and abstract creative eye, Mind’s Eye are confident that they can find the right brands and clients with which his work would fit.

But Johansson has no plans to stop snapping happily at the Swedish countryside and applying his far flung ideas with the use of collage and Photoshop. “It’s really strong being able to catch something in a single frame so I will continue to do the photography,” he says.

Already boasting a healthy balance of personal and commissioned work for Swedish brands, such as IKEA, and international giants like Microsoft and Stratco in Australia, he’s relishing the opportunities currently in front of him. After this interview, he’s giving a short talk for TED and was scouted by Google in Los Angeles to work on concept visuals for the company last summer. Not bad for a man who never saw this as a career.

In fact, Johansson has become more famed for his creativity outside his native Sweden, and offers up an interesting statistic that only five per cent of visitors to his website are from the country.

With regards to keeping up his inspiration levels, he says: “everything you see can somehow inspire you. You just have to keep your eyes open. I have so many ideas and so little time to realise them. I always thought it was strange that more people were not doing this kind of stuff.” And if his creative flair is to spread into the realms of motion pictures, we doubt that you’ve read the last about Erik Johansson here.