Max Colson on the digital composite images used to market luxury builds

If you live in a city, the chances are you’ve already encountered the digital composite images used to advertise the new “urban builds” popping up left, right and centre like ant hills in an otherwise lovely summer’s garden. Have you ever taken a second to recognise how hilarious a spectrum of “urban residents” they include though? A lovely smattering of white middle class men aged between 20 and 40, perpetually swinging briefcases, with the odd sweet-looking woman pushing a buggy for good measure.

This is the distinctly modern cultural phenomenon that Max Colson examines in his collection Images of Enjoyment and Spectacle, which is included in his new exhibition Virtual Control at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Reinterpreting the images “originally used to market privatised public spaces and luxury housing,” Max takes the odd collection of subjects and their shadows and crops them into a dreamy pastel landscape, reimagining this surreal situation in a fantasy landscape.