The hypnotic imagery from photographer Jayson Edward Carter is imbued with a uniquely 21st-century aesthetic. His portraits, created through a multi-layered process of digital capture and manipulation using computer peripherals (scanner, printer, projector, etc.), seek to exacerbate the new-age conflict of the digital vs. analog. Multicolored explosions envelop distorted forms. Bodies contort and morph into humanoid figures, atomizing into digital artifacts. A limb or appendage bursts through a sea of gradients, sculpted from shadow. These mistranslations between the physical and the virtual allude to a larger narrative of digital identity in the 21st century, where “truth” is elusive and self-presentation uses technology to alter, augment, and transform. The digital image is thus increasingly fallible, and we must reckon with this as an image-based society.

Jayson currently lives and works in Brooklyn. His background is in commercial studio photography and his work has been published and exhibited internationally.