Summer Wagner’s surreal yet strikingly familiar photographs feel like hyperreal paintings

Art feeling otherworldly is one thing, but to create art that feels similarly otherworldly and familiar – both nostalgic and (at times) unnerving – is a whole other feat. For LA-based fine art photographer and film director Summer Wagner, the latter is her playground. “I like to capture real people and real places subtly making them feel surreal,” Summer tells us, “like a landscape in a daydream.” Summer manages to capture an indefinable, effervescent tone that feels, for all its absurdity, relatable – as if from our own encounters. “I do this because that is how I experience my own self throughout the day,” she says. “Our minds and bodies create fantasies for us constantly, begging the question whether or not those are fantasies.”

This feeling of reality across Summer’s work comes through both the sense of narrative that interlaces her work – akin to her cinematic inspirations Kristoffer Borgli and Yorgos Lanthimos – as well as the practical nature of her setup. “I use mostly practical effects,” Summer explains, “long exposure techniques and colour grading in Adobe Lightroom,” utilising the technical craft she honed whilst studying film production in college where she made several short films.

Despite her love of storytelling, Summer didn’t find her voice until taking a whole two years away from creating altogether. Then, after borrowing a friend’s camera during the pandemic, her passion was rekindled. “Having a solitary practice in creating these scenes, often through self-portraiture really sparked my love for bringing my imagined life in front of the camera,” she says.

Alongside contemporary filmmakers, Summer’s inspirations head in a very literary and artistic direction, naming Virginia Woolf novels and Ursula K LeGuin essays as key influences, in addition to Meg Webster and Michael Heizer sculpture and paintings by Aaron Wisenfield and Salman Toor – all of which can be seen threaded across her engrossing narrative tableaus.