Photographer Leigh Merrill has created a series of images that waver between reality and fantasy. While exploring the urban environment of the San Francisco Bay Area, she became fascinated by its complexity. Says Merrill, "Motivated by curiosity about the architecture that surrounds us and how it reflects larger ideas of beauty, class, romanticism and even perfection—I started to photograph homes, and eventually photographed thousands. I then digitally assembled and reassembled these photographs to create new images; each is typically made from several photographs of individual houses combined with tens to hundreds of smaller bits and pieces from other photographs of houses in the region. At first these images might look plausible; but closer inspection reveals that they are fabricated, and in fact illogical."
Convergence, archival pigment print, 20" x 23
Pebble Street, archival pigment print, 15 x 21 1/2"