Von Morisse uses his grisaille oil paintings as the starting point for a photographic process that lends his scenes a veneer of credence and historical veracity.

The images, which are simultaneously nostalgic and incongruously futuristic, recall not only family snapshots but utopian cinema.

These become conceptual “negatives,” which the artist photographs and enlarges considerably. In so doing, von Morisse emphasizes the longstanding dialogue between photography as a tool of historical documentation and painting as an indicator of the subjective, by reversing the traditional roles of the two mediums.

The resulting soft-focus, selenium-toned silver gelatin prints recontextualize the painted images into the often unquestioned realm of photographic truth.