Michael Jeffrey Wille
Michael Jeffrey Wille is a lens-based artist whose practice explores the boundaries between photography and digital transformation. Working within a spectrum of heavily processed imagery, he is drawn to the tension between the real and the abstract-between what is seen and what is manipulated.
His work aims to challenge conventional perceptions of photography by means of transformation through intentional distortion, layering, and compositional reconfiguration most notably through data bending, pixel sorting, hex-editing, and dithered rendering methods.
After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Columbia College Chicago in 2021, he has continued his pursuit of knowledge by working in a range of commercial studios, and alongside other photographers as an assistant.
These experiences have provided him with an understanding of contemporary techniques and workflows, while also sharpening technical skills to amplify his experimental approach.
Through both client-driven and personal work, he strives to re-imagine the medium of photo as a tool for artistic inquiry, capable of showcasing both visual truth and expressive fluidity.
_.DECAY._
Photography, as an art, has the potential to look into us more profoundly than we can look in it.
The information and the subject within the hex-fragments is what contains multitudes. We can look at the final result and wonder, but what's inside knows what was and what awaits.
Self-portraits, mundane snapshots, found images, photographs of the last time with a pet; all of this will
_.DECAY._
but somewhere deep in the binary lies the aesthetic, and in spite of the inevitable degradation, that memory remains.