This photographer should’ve been enlisted in the military for camouflage research. This is because he possesses a keen eye for blending people, animals, and fruits into their surroundings, simply by the deft use of colors and textures. Meet Joseph Ford, the creator of ‘knitted camouflage’.
Joseph Ford camouflage involves knitwear that merges the wearer into the background in such a way that one needs a double-take to distinguish between the two. This wouldn’t have been possible had this Brighton, UK-based photographer not met Nina Dodd, a professional knitter, who also hails from the same city.
Ford’s imagination got ignited when Dodd met him for the first time for some other issue. In this meeting, she showed him a sweater she’d knitted with a bus seat design. This got him thinking. He developed this idea and put together his first composition with Dodd’s help. This experiment tasted success in the first go and there was no looking back for these two creative persons.
This also led to ‘Invisible Jumpers’, a photo book of knitted sweaters that seamless match the surroundings. This book was the result of a four-year project in which people, animals, and even fruits were meticulously dressed in detailed knitwear, each having exactly the same color and pattern of the background that make them blend perfectly.
This project wasn’t easy. Ford had to work closely with Dodd, giving her ideas and she, in turn, devoted, in some cases, close to 100 hours to knit sweaters that met his creative vision. He took it upon himself to find interesting locations to shoot. He clicked himself or someone else in that setting and then presented this photo to Dodd to help her knit jumpers of matching colors.
Once Dodd knitted the required jumper, Ford made the model wear it and took the picture in the same setting, showing the model blended with the background. Like most photographers, he too uses Photoshop and CGI in his creations for color balancing.
The variety offered by Joseph Ford knitted camouflage is simply mind-boggling. Sample this, in one photo, a man blends into the tiled wall behind him, wearing a checkered cardigan that perfectly matches it. In another, a banana becomes a part of a watermelon by getting ‘dressed’ up in the red ‘flesh’ of this juicy fruit. There are many more.
People are warming up to these unique creations on Joseph Ford Instagram and Facebook.
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