Military fatigues may be the best way to blend into a jungle environment. But what about suburban underpasses? Metro stations? Running tracks? Even cross-country coach buses? Those require a bit more chameleonic improvisation.
A new photo series called Knitted Camouflage, by photographer Joseph Ford and knitter Nina Dodd, imagines a world where lovingly hand-knit garments can blend humans right into their everyday environments. So whether it’s a street artist whose tangerine sweater blends in seamlessly with his giant spray-painted cat, or a runner who lays in the middle of a track with a perfectly curved, white line running right across her belly, the scenes will give you an uncanny respect for the art of knitting.
“I took a long time working out locations and choosing models, and then had to work out what exact position I wanted them to take for the majority of the images. Then Nina had to calculate how to implement the design, which was very time-consuming,” says Ford. “Since the models had to blend into the backgrounds perfectly, the way Nina knitted determined how they could sit or stand relative to their environment. This meant working out in advance what camera angle I would use.”
“There were several locations where I wanted to photograph that would have been too complicated to knit,” says Ford. “No failures though–it was pretty clear from the outset whether a location would work well or not.”
“There are lots of Photoshopped images out there,” says Ford. “Knitting is an artisanal medium, and it’s satisfying to do things for real. It was a way for us to work together with our own fields of expertise to create a collaborative series that went beyond what we could have done individually.”