“I feel like regardless if I win– they haven’t announced the winners yet– the exposure for being named is great!” said photographic artist Brandon Juhasz, a finalist in New York City gallerist Jen Bekman’s prestigious HEY HOT SHOT photographic competition. The write-up is here: http://www.heyhotshot.com/blog/2011/06/20/hhs-contender-brandon-juhasz/I

Instead of the world as subject for his own photographs, Juhasz uses the images he finds online to create his own reality. He takes paper print-outs, cuts and constructs, folding edges of flat pictures and gluing to form three-dimensional objects. He builds sets of faux red meat towers in a faux wooded picnic spot, explores the American Dream in a deceptively realistic scene of paper pastry pies stuck in the window of a paper house. His photographs of fresh fish are neither fresh nor fish. Juhasz builds red paper tomatoes, a near Cubist pomegranate, and a plate of hamburger and fries that embody desire and idealism. “The meat in particular for me embodies desire. This raw flesh, hunger, need, etc,” stated Juhasz. Some of his image are a personal narrative rooted in certain childhood memories while others are based on his self-confessed “Martha Stewart addiction.”

Juhasz stated that “the sheer volume of pictures we encounter and create as a society help formulate our world view, often subconsciously developing our desires and standards of expectations. What we see is engrained and becomes knowledge and baggage that we carry with us.”

Juhasz finds inspiration for his constructed photographs in the writings of philosopher Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980). McLuhan is known for coining the expressions “turn on, tune in, drop out” (popularized by Timothy Leary), “the medium is the message” and “the global village” and predicted the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented. (Wikipedia) McLuhan’s published work The Mechanical Bride (1951), is an examination of the effects of advertising on our society.

Brandon Juhasz is one of four photographers featured in the exhibition THE NEW PHOTOGRAPH, that will run from September 8th through October 26th at the Hagendorn Foundation Gallery http://www.hfgallery.org/exhibitions_upcoming.html, in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography Festival.  The New Photograph exhibition includes 8 images by Brandon Juhasz, as well as visual works by Jonathan Lewis, Penelope Umbrico, and Jason Salavon.

The Hagedorn Foundation Gallery is a not-for-profit that opened in April 2008 under the mentorship of Julian Cox, curator of photography at the Getty and High Museums. The intention of the Hagendorn is to offer photographs that broaden local viewers visual reference to photography and photo based art, and to feature “artists who are concerned with the role of their work in the socio-political and cultural arenas.”

Brandon Juhasz recently launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise $1500 dollars to cover expenses incurred during two trips to Atlanta for this exhibition of his work. Juhasz viewed the Kickstarter project as an exchange, offering his prints and paper constructions as perks to his funders. Brandon has already reached his goal of $1500 on Kickstarter, and even gone beyond, with more funders Kicking in up until the deadline several days away.

View more constructed art photographs on Brandon Juhasz’s website, http://brandonjuhasz.com and on his blogs Hello My Name is Art, hellomynameisart.com  and Lens Scratch http://www.lenscratch.com/2009/08/brandon-juhasz.html

Article first published as Young Cleveland Artist Receives Critical Attention for his Constructed Photos on Technorati.