5 Photographs like paintings

Photography or painting? In our gallery we often experience this question: “Is this painted?”, “This is supposed to be a photograph?”. Each time our guests are thrilled when I tell them: There are only photographs here. In this article we want to show you some works of art that look like paintings and for very different reasons, for many viewers, create the feeling of standing in front of a painting.

Photographs like paintings

While the composition of pictorial elements is usually in the foreground with minimalist photographers, it is often these compositions that trigger the viewer’s association with a painting. Sometimes they are deliberate allusions to modern paintings. But always the effect is supported by the special printing process of our limited Fine Art Prints.

1. Jon Setter – Mondrian-Esque Photography

Jon Setter was born in Detroit, Michigan (1989) and lives in Sydney, Australia. Setter’s work is part of an ongoing investigation that seeks to uncover the invisible aspects that shape our experience of urban spaces and architecture. He often works with themes he discovered by chance on spontaneous walks, documenting from peculiar angles the details people usually pass by to create constructivist artworks. His photograph “Mondrian-Esque 1” is a deliberate allusion to Piet Mondrian’s painting “Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue and Black”

2 Natalie Christensen – photographs like paintings by David Hockney

The Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts named Natalie Christensen one of the “10 Photographers to watch”. Following exhibitions in London, New York and Los Angeles, the American photographer and psychotherapist presented her work “The Deconstructed Self” for the first time in Berlin in 2019. At the gallery Minimal. Natalie Christensen’s photographs are reminiscent, in part, of the paintings of David Hockney. For example, her famous photograph “Deep Blue Pool“.

3. François Aubret – photographs like Suprematist paintings

François’ work is a collection of geometries and patterns that he encounters in urban environments. Like a graphic designer, he combines architecture, urban elements and nature into vivid photographic compositions. His photographic works are reminiscent of the Suprematist paintings of Kazimir Malevich.

4. Amanda Briggs – Color Field Painting ala Rothko

Amanda Briggs is an artist from the USA. With her photography she explores the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. In her search for her motifs, she is attracted by ordinary places and elicits from them their abstract beauty, which she translates into compositions reminiscent of the famous colour field paintings. Her photograph “Untitled 184”, for example, evokes in form and colour associations with an untitled painting by Mark Rothko.

5. Giacomo Tintori – photographs like paintings

Giacomo Tintori is a young artist from Milan. With his photography he develops a study on the relationship between forms and light. His elaborate compositions are abstract works of art, consisting of straight lines and large surfaces in his unique Milanese palette. His photography also draws parallels to Minimalist painting.