Case Studies

Danish photographer Asger Carlsen brings together the weird, the faintly disturbing and the down right out of place. But, whether it’s a child with wooden legs, or a bird with human ears, his works are strangely convincing. At first glance everything seems normal – like this image, which looks like a mundane family photo. But then it slaps you in the face. Carlsen’s doctors his extraordinary images with a sharp dose of wit. ‘The “truth” of photographs has always been in question, but in these images, it’s the un-truth you are left wondering about, like vivid hallucinations you see out of the corner of your eye,’ says Tim Barber, curator of ‘Things’, an exhibition of Carlsen’s work at Primary Photographic Gallery in New York (until 18 July). ‘They are optical illusions in the grandest sense, doctored images with invisible scars.’ This photograph is also found in ‘Wrong’, a limited-edition tome of Carlsen’s work published by Mörel Books.