Slawomir Elsner

Slawomir Elsner’s photorealistic paintings and drawings capture issues of marginalized identities and traumatic contemporary experiences. He meticulously crafts his paintings and drawings from photographs, even reproducing various imperfections such as blurring or the effects of low quality paper. Elsner’s work often centers on the way images can obscure the truth of an event, as in “Landscapes” (2003), a series of delicately disturbing drawings based on press photographs of the Iraq War, illustrating the way aesthetics can conceal horrific casualties.