Fake Flowers in Full Colour

Do you notice anything particular about these four colours? They represent the four colours of the CMYK colour system. In contrast to the RGB colour system that dominates the representation of colours in the digital world, the CMYK colour system is central to print colours. Like RGB, CMYK is an acronym: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key. These four colours form the basis of the entire colour spectrum in printing.

Photographer Jaap Scheeren and graphic designer Hans Gremmen conduct an almost absurdist investigation into the impact of digitalisation on the colour of an image. Fake Flowers in Full Colour comprises four images of the same flower bouquet, each in a different base colour. If the photos were to be layered on top of each other, they would create a lifelike still life of a bouquet. Instead they create a brightly coloured, artificial-looking image. The artists use this to question the apparent realism of the photographic medium.