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My name is Monica Carvalho and I am passionate about creating unique artworks that make you look twice (previously here).

I'm a Swiss-born digital artist living in Berlin. Ever since I was young, dreams, magic tricks, and surrealism have fascinated me.

My photomontages are produced on Adobe Photoshop with images from my own portfolio, by combining models (myself, friends, or family) with landscape photos I take on travels.

I love playing with textures and colors in my photo manipulations, and I do so by finding similarities between my creative photography shots. For example, the sand on a beach in the Bahamas had the same color as my stomach, so it was perfect for a photo collage.

My aim is to make you double-take and provide you a glimpse of an alternate reality. The reality of my craziest creative ideas!

More info: Instagram

#1

When You Forget To Put Softener In The Wash And Your T-Shirt Feels Like Concrete

When You Forget To Put Softener In The Wash And Your T-Shirt Feels Like Concrete

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Since a young age, I’ve had a fascination for all things art, subconscious, and illusionism. I enjoy remembering my dreams in the morning. I love magic shows, watching the impossible become possible, being tricked by optical illusions, being made to "look twice". I developed a passion for photography very early, probably due to seeing my parents with a camera all the time photographing me and my siblings. For my child's brain, a camera was a magical object!

#2

What I Mean When I Say I'm Gonna Wear 'Natural Makeup'

What I Mean When I Say I'm Gonna Wear 'Natural Makeup'

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Magdalina777
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5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

While it's very well done as a picture edit it's somehow very disturbing to look at ._. At first glance it seems as though she's deadly sick and has some sort of mold growing on her skin, which...yuck. I can appreciate the idea behind it but damn. Maybe it's just me.

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During my history of art studies in the UK, I discovered the Surrealist movement, from which I acquired a new way of seeing the world. Artists who influenced me include René Magritte, Chema Madoz, and Rob Gonsalves. They made me realise the possibilities that art offers for playing around and inventing stories. I felt like my photos needed some kind of "magic". So I sought a way to combine my two passions – photography and surrealism – and the solution was digital collage (or "photomontage"). The turning point was when I came across the image editing software Adobe Photoshop. It was the perfect tool to express myself by merging my photos with my imagination!

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A graphic designer friend of mine introduced Adobe Photoshop to me when I was in college. I fell in love with it straight away: finally, a way to merge my photos with my imagination! I’ve been self-teaching Photoshop for almost ten years now, and every day I learn new tricks. If you scroll down my Instagram feed, you will notice how my photo manipulation skills have evolved over time!

#6

Duckolate Cupcake

Duckolate Cupcake

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The creation process – merging the images on Photoshop and then retouching the colors on Lightroom – is relatively quick. Most of my photomontages take between 1 and 2 hours to put together. What takes time is to come up with new ideas, to ‘train’ my eyes to be able to find atypical connections between things that at first glance have nothing in common. That’s also what I mean by ‘making the ordinary extraordinary’. Everyday objects are so familiar that we tend to not think about them twice, we just use them for their function. It takes time and patience to find new purposes for the familiar, but the surprise on people’s faces is totally worth it!

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#8

Iphone 20

Iphone 20

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Magdalina777
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5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This one is cool. Still waiting for those "true 3d" screens they've been promising us for years:P

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My motto is to "make the ordinary extraordinary", which means to raise something to a new level of meaning. Everyday things are so familiar that we tend not to think twice about them. We no longer marvel much at our eyes and how they can see amazing things every day. The message I want to convey with my photomontages is that an object does not necessarily have only one function. And a very effective way to draw attention to something that has been taken for granted is to change the original function of that object.

My "bodyscapes" illustrate my fascination for the connection between the human body and nature. I perceive our bodies as landscapes: eyebrows are forests, tongues are winding paths, lips are delicate hills, backs are strong bridges, bellies are sandy beaches, etc. I am particularly obsessed with eyes because to me they are the most expressive part of our body. My photomontages with eyes often create direct eye contact with the observer, which is a powerful thing: you can make someone laugh, happy, fearful, sad, or angry just by the way you look at them. We also tend to search for human faces in things, it is a phenomenon called pareidolia. I find that thrilling!

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#14

Summer Is In The Hair

Summer Is In The Hair

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Magdalina777
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5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Ooo. Great hair effect, if you coloured her face over with water(like she's kinda underwater and stuff) she could be a siren or a spiti of the sea or something=3

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#15

D(H)ead End Street

D(H)ead End Street

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#16

“I’ve Been Through The Desert On A Horse With No Name...”

“I’ve Been Through The Desert On A Horse With No Name...”

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