David Scouffas is a photographer – and much more. If you google him, you will find that he is a well-known environmentalist associated with the Sierra Club. His finished artwork, photomontages, are created from photos he takes himself plus appropriated images, seamlessly arranged to tell stories (and, often, a lecture on environmental and/or social issues).

“Boat People” is a case in point. The photomontage includes a large yacht with super-models on deck, moving past an oil slick and into a school of small dead fish, followed by a shadowed image of refugees in a small boat. Mediated reality.

According to Scouffas, “I am interested in the increasingly mediated reality that we’re presented, reality that is filtered, processed, interpreted with a commercial or political objective, and more and more at odds with actual events and trends in the world. 
“As a response, I have created a series of photomontage images making use of appropriated photographs. Juxtaposing advertising and magazine imagery with reality-based news photographs, these images look behind the curtains of fantasy we’re often shown, revealing a more ambiguous and increasingly dangerous world.
“Digital manipulation of images is pervasive in advertising and entertainment. By using these same techniques, I seek to create images that reach the viewer through familiar visual language, but with a profoundly different meaning and emotional impact.”

David Scouffas is a graduate of the Academy of Art University and has exhibited extensively in the Greater Bay Area.

Chill