About Jonas Daley

Upon closer inspection, something that by its motif and colour scheme looks like a painting by René Magritte turns out to be a lightly manipulated photograph. When taking pictures, the China-based photographer Jonas Daley likes to use an… Read more

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Work Info

For Chinese photographer Jonas Daley, pink is more than just a colour. It is nature, youth and a creative soul that springs from the four seasons. His photographs of isolated desert landscapes sing of this multifaceted hue as a powerful and meditative force. Through the clever use of an infrared filter, Daley lets himself be inspired to engage in artistic colour manipulation. As if by magic, a realm of dreams and fantasy emerges from the glowing-hot desert sand.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Upon closer inspection, something that by its motif and colour scheme looks like a painting by René Magritte turns out to be a lightly manipulated photograph. When taking pictures, the China-based photographer Jonas Daley likes to use an infrared lens and subsequently alters the images’ colour hues, for instance changing the natural hue of the hot desert sand into pink. The sky gets to keep its distinguished blue pallor.

The use of infrared is an effective form of inspiration and immediately elevates the desert landscape to the level of heavenly dream and fantasy. Although all the landscape details have been captured in a photographically precise and detailed manner, the composition is reduced to just a few fundamental elements: sand dunes, bushes, clouds, sky and moon. Thanks to this conscious reduction, as well as the use of unusual lighting and colour manipulation in post-production, the photographs look as if they have been painted on canvas using a paint brush and an impressionist colour palette. But they are and remain photographs.

For Jonas Daley, pink is delicate sweetness, tenderness and innocence. It stands for romance, elegance and noblesse. Daley ascribes it with an addictive longing. An enthusiastic athlete, he repeatedly seeks out extreme experiences in nature and in areas bordering the inaccessible, always with his camera at hand. His desert images may feel fantastical, but they are thoroughly meditative studies of a highly varied and compositionally photographed landscape of sand. One could almost take them for pictures of a distant nameless planet in an unknown parallel universe.

Stephan Reisner

Exhibitions

2019	Shenzhen University Public Lecture
2022	Sony World Photography Awards 2022 exhibition (Somerset House, London)