After reading “Digital Technologies as A Tool”, I became interested in the artist Paul Smith. It was amazing how the artist was able to create a alternative reality through digital manipulation are complemented by the works an air of the “hyperreal”, creating a heightened reality that seems neither an authentic representation nor artificial.

Based on my online research.Paul studied fine arts between 1991 and 1995, and then completed his masters in photography.He focused his skills in examining what drove masculinity while concentrating on the surrounding culture and social norms that created the visual of “various alpha male identities”. Paul became interest in the army ways, joined in age 16 in 1985, and after several jobs in the army and moving to Germany he became a paramedic. After the army he hard the opportunity to learn more about different types of photography through artists like Helen Chadwick and Jimmy Pike. Paul was later interested in depicting what he personally experience in war and rearranged pictures that gad replicas of him in them. Manipulating the photographs in certain ways was very difficult during that time since technology was not as advanced.

In his series Artist Rifles and Action, Paul Smith depicts himself as the protagonists of his own works, deconstructing myths of masculine stereotypes and glorification. The Action Series depicts as the omnipotent super hero of any actions films, jumping from one building to the next or in free fall, parachuting from a plane. The Heroic fantasies propagated by the movie became the reality of the artist. In a gallery environment, the art works installed with light boxes under the ceilings enhancing the illusion and force the viewer look up to the hero. This shows a major factor in the representation of art. In my opinion, the artist just want to show the stereotypes of masculine and mocks the heroic figures in history in order to entertain viewers. However, Paul Smith was able to connect with his viewers and let them connect the art piece to their every day life, which makes the art works personal.