Dog Park, 2006

Miklos Gaál's work was first brought to you by Aperture in reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow (Aperture, 2005) and in the traveling exhibition of the same name. A member of the Helsinki School, Gaál's work involves selecting the position of his camera at a long distance from the scene being captured. By playing with focal distances, Gaál turns scenes from everyday life into strange cardboard cut-outs. City traffic, sporting events, and parades are all transformed into scale models.

His photographs, always taken from a distant and elevated viewpoint, are disturbing to look at: the fuzziness of some areas of the image creates the curious effect of miniaturization, giving viewers the impression of looking at an artificial toy world. Only by continuing to look carefully at the image, orientated by the clearly focused areas of the picture, can viewers pass beyond this first impression and re-establish the truth. Gaál uses distance and blurriness as ways of making the represented scenes more remote and turning the tangible world into an unreal universe. These images skirt the realms of fiction, like the stories that children construct when they simulate the real world in miniature.

C-Print
Paper Size: 15 3/4 x 19 7/16 inches
Image Size: 11 13/16 x 15 9/16 inches
Edition of 25 and 4 Artist’s Proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Miklos Gaál (b. 1974, Espoo, Finland) graduated from University of Art & Design Helsinki in 2004. He has participated in numerous solo and group shows in Finland, Germany, France, Canada, and Brazil, among others. His work is held in the collections of Helsinki City Art Museum; the Musée d’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; the Calder Foundation, and others.