Biography

Oleg Dou transforms photographic images of human faces, manipulating them with computer software to produce stylized features and airbrushed skin. When Dou’s parents, a painter and dress designer, gave him a copy of Photoshop at age 13, he began to alter images of his school friends’ and teachers’ faces. Initially inspired by a 19th-century tradition of capturing child funeral portraits, for which the body would be dressed in costume and prepared in intricate detail, Dou is interested in producing images that are both alluring and unsettling. “I am looking for something bordering between the beautiful and the repulsive, living and dead,” he has said. “I want to attain the feeling of presence one can get when walking by a plastic manikin…”