Mind your step

Between 7-12 June 2011 Erik Johansson carried out a street illusion called “Mind your step” at the famous square Sergels torg in the heart of Stockholm. Watching the illusion from right position gave the impression of a 32 x 18 meter (105′ x 59′ feet) hole right down in the ground.

Mind your step is a large scale 32 x 18 meters (105′ x 59′ feet) street illusion in Stockholm at Sergels torg made by me, Erik Johansson.  For a long time I have been doing creative retouch and surreal montages. I’ve always been quite fascinated by perspective illusions in my images and some time ago I got an idea of trying to realize one in a public space somewhere. My idea was to put a photo in an environment and actually trick people that it would have depth. Street illusions isn’t something new, but I wanted to try to make it as a photo instead of drawing and painting the streets. Photography is my medium and I wanted it to look as realistic as possible, just like my photos. I was introduced to a project called Generation 7 where seven young creative people get to realize their dream project. This was a perfect opportunity to actually realize this idea for real using my imagination, camera and PC. I choose the heart of Stockholm, Sergels torg.

Follow my work with it from sketch to final illusion on my blog and generation7.se.

Photos (more to come)

Videos

Competition

To make the interaction with the illusion a bit more interesting I also carried out a competition between 7-12 June. The idea is to photograph a friend who interact with the illusion and send the picture to my e-mail. I will select a winner based on creativity and originality. The whole illusion does not have to be visible in the image but it has to be photographed from the yellow platform. The first price is a Samsung laptop 900X3A-A01 with Windows 7.

Winner:

Daniel Zhang

Motivation: A simple but different idea, which gives the feeling of a daring balancing on the edge of the bottomless pit. Some more info and a short interview with the winner available in this blog post.

Comments

Powered by Generation7.se