It’s not uncommon to research and look up pictures of a place that you’re going to visit.
But what about actually reaching your destination and re-enacting the scenarios from the stock images that turned up in your search?
Jerusalem-born photographer Hemya Moran did just that.
After being offered the opportunity for an artist residency in Deauville, France, Moran Googled for more information about the place. Stock photographs of lovey-dovey couples and images with an air of romance about them turned up in the results.
Moran wrote, “In these stock images there is a promise: a young, single girl armed with a bikini, determined enough for hunting and fishing for (preferably French) men in Deauville, will end up spending the weekend in the arms of a lover.”
So she decided to emulate the romantic shots by approaching complete strangers who seem to resemble the profiles of the men in the photographs that she saw.
Moran then noted that her staged photographs challenge the line distinguishing fantasy from reality.
She wrote, “As my photographs go on to have a life of their own in the image world, they will themselves become swallowed up and incorporated into the online image bank, further complicating their slippery relationship with reality.”
Check out the entire series here.
[via PetaPixel, images via Hemya Moran]