Monica Carvalho is a Swiss-born visual artist who makes surreal photomontages: single images built from two or more of her own photographs, joined so neatly that the eye accepts an impossible scene for a second before the brain catches up. A road becomes a sleeping woman, a candle flame lights up the Empire State Building, and a mug of coffee turns into a snowy mountain. She shares the work on Instagram as mofart_photomontages, and it has been shown internationally, including at the Museum of Illusions in Seville.
Below are seventeen of her pieces, grouped by the kind of trick they use, with a short note on what each image combines and why it works. They are constructed artworks, not real scenes, and part of the fun is finding the exact line where one photograph ends and the next begins.
About the artist and her method
Carvalho became interested in photography as a child, watching her parents photograph the family, and discovered Surrealism while studying art history in the United Kingdom. She cites René Magritte, Chema Madoz, Rob Gonsalves and Erik Johansson among her influences. Her working motto is to make the ordinary extraordinary.
Her process is simple in outline and demanding in practice. She shoots with a Nikon camera or an iPhone, merges the images in Adobe Photoshop and fine-tunes the colour in Lightroom. She uses only her own pictures, often reusing shots taken years earlier when she sees a new possibility in them. In one interview she summed up her approach in a few words:
"I perceive our bodies as landscapes." (Monica Carvalho)
Bodies that become landscapes
1. Resting in the land
A country path widens into the body of a woman lying asleep, her folded arms and face emerging from the tarmac. The grey of the road and the grey of her top are matched so closely that the join almost disappears. The effect suggests a person returning to the ground, peaceful rather than unsettling.
4. A beach made of skin
Smooth skin rises like a sand dune beside the sea, with a neat stack of pebbles balanced on top and, at the bottom of the frame, an upside-down band of trees and sky. The curve of the body takes the place of a hill. It is one of the clearest examples of her idea of the body as landscape.
5. Hair painted with a brush
A woman curled up on a white sheet seems to have been painted onto it, her long hair turning into a turquoise stroke that leads back to a giant brush held at the edge of the frame. The tiny figure and the oversized brush change the scale of the scene, so the sheet reads as a canvas.
11. A missing body
A dark dress lies on a bed with tattooed arms and bare feet sticking out of it, but there is no body in between. Because the brain expects a person to fill the gap, the empty dress looks eerie. The trick relies on careful lighting so that the arms and dress seem to share the same space.
15. A zipped eye
A closed eye has been replaced by a zip, closing the lid like a bag. Eyelashes and the metal teeth follow the same curve, which is what makes the swap believable. The image plays on the idea of shutting out the world on purpose.
17. Adjusting your own iris
Fingers appear to hold and turn the coloured part of a huge eye, as if it were a camera lens that could be refocused by hand. The soft, pale skin of the eyelid and the hand blend into one surface, so the hand seems to be inside the eye.
Playing with scale
6. Swans on a smartphone
Three swans glide across the dark screen of a phone held in an open hand, as though the device were a tiny pond. The black glass and the dark water share the same tone, which lets the two images merge. Many viewers read it as a comment on how much of nature we now see through a screen.
7. A face in the yogurt
A spoon lifted from a tub of yogurt holds a small human face, peering out of the white cream as if taking a bath. The creamy texture hides the edges of the inserted face. It is a playful image of being stirred into everyday routine.
9. Friends in the palm of a hand
A group of young people lie relaxing in the lines of an open palm, as if on a sandy beach. The warm skin tone works as sand, and the creases look like dunes. The title idea, "cool guys", comes from their sunglasses and easy poses.
12. A man inside a capsule
Among a spill of golden gel capsules, one holds a tiny man trapped inside like an insect in amber. The transparent shell and the shallow focus make him look sealed in. Some viewers see it as a comment on how people can come to depend on medicines or supplements.
16. A mountain latte
A black mug overflows not with milk foam but with a snowy mountain range, with white spilling down the side like a drip of coffee. The texture of snow-covered rock is close enough to foam that the eye accepts the swap at once.
Reflections and upside-down worlds
3. The burning tower
At sunset over Manhattan, the spire of the Empire State Building becomes the wick of a candle, topped with a bright flame. The thin mast and the warm sky make the combination feel natural. It is one of her best-known pieces and shows how a single small addition can transform a familiar skyline.
8. Swans in the sunglasses
A man's sunglasses reflect not the sky but a lake full of swans, so the lenses become windows onto another place. The shape of the lens frames the scene neatly. Many viewers point out that it could pass for an eyewear advertisement.
13. A swan in an inverted forest
A swan floats on a channel of water between rows of tall bare trees, but the trees hang down from the top of the frame as well as rising from the bottom. Turning part of a reflection the wrong way up leaves the viewer unsure which way is up.
14. Walking under the forest
A child in a blue coat walks along a path, but above him the forest floor and its trunks hang upside down, while green treetops lie beneath his feet. The image recalls the work of Rob Gonsalves, who painted similar shifts between ground and sky.
Objects that become metaphors
2. A shirt that hugs itself
Two tattooed arms reach out of an empty black shirt that floats against a pale sky, wrapping around nothing. Without a body, the shirt seems to have a life of its own. Many viewers read it as a comment on fashion and on how clothes can stand in for the person inside them.
10. A prison made from a chair
Two hands grip the wooden bars of an ordinary chair back as though it were a prison cell. The title that came with the image, "We are captives of our own identities", describes the idea: the bars are domestic and familiar, and the trap is self-made.
How photo illusions like these work
Most of Carvalho's images rely on three tricks. The first is a shared shape: a road and a body, or a spire and a wick, have the same outline, so one can replace the other. The second is a shared texture or colour, such as snow and milk foam or a dark screen and dark water. The third is a change of scale, which makes the viewer reread the whole scene once the small figure is noticed.
If you want to try something similar, start by collecting your own photos of everyday objects and of people, then look for pairs that share a contour or a surface. Lighting matters most: if the light falls from the same direction and has the same colour in both pictures, the join is far harder to spot. As the artist herself has said, the hard part is not the software but coming up with new ideas.
For more playful visual ideas, see Creative Desktop Wallpapers That Interact With Icons and Screens.
Sources: all images by Monica Carvalho (mofart_photomontages on Instagram); artist background from Urban Photo Awards: Monica Carvalho and INPRNT Spotlights, 7 November 2022: Monica Carvalho.
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