Ed Robeson

Edward’s work is rooted in personal upheaval, drawing on a youth marked by chaos and escape through psychedelics and disconnection. These early experiences shaped a practice that explores the tension between clarity and collapse, beauty and pain. His art reflects an emotional landscape that words cannot contain—an introspective dive into fractured realities and moments of quiet revelation.

Influenced by the vast, echoing environments of his upbringing, Edward’s visual language blends bold colour, sharp urban architecture, and layered graphic techniques. Photography is his entry point, but his true voice emerges in the manipulation of space—through carving, layering, and distortion. This disruption becomes a metaphor for emotional and psychological freedom.

“My work is a way out,” he says. “It’s how I cope. These worlds I walk into—they’re real to me.”

Edward’s signature style, which he calls Graphic Photography, transforms everyday scenes into constructed emotional spaces where the chaotic and the sublime coexist.

“Framed in a graphic style of photography, reconstructing the familiar into visual fictions, composed realities that blur the boundary between observation and imagination. Each image acts as a threshold, inviting a quiet exchange between the tangible and the unseen, the known and the yet-to-be-named.”

6 questions with Ed Robeson

We ask our emerging artists 6 questions to uncover what drives their work, practice, and creativity.

What themes or questions do you find recurring in your work?

My practice often returns to the tension between urban utopia and dystopia — spaces that are both dreamed and decaying. I’m drawn to the proposition of escapism, but not in the traditional sense of retreat; rather, I ask: Where else could we go? What realities might exist beyond this one — architecturally, emotionally, politically? My work hovers between the imagined and the actual, tracing outlines of possible futures, fractured presents, and forgotten exits. There’s a restless curiosity behind it: a search for places that don’t yet exist, or that exist only in glimpses — in ruins, reflections, or glitches in the everyday.

Can you describe a pivotal moment in your journey as an artist?

One of the most formative moments came in my final year of school, during a Photoshop lesson. My teacher introduced me to a layering technique — simple at first, but it completely reframed how I understood images. Something clicked in my thinking: I realised that photography didn’t have to be confined to a single frame. It could be deconstructed, distorted, rebuilt. That discovery — the idea that an image could be manipulated into something layered, ambiguous, unstable — became a foundational shift in how I approach visual work. I still use that technique in nearly everything I make. It was the moment I began to think like an artist.

What materials or processes are most important in your practice - and why?

The camera is the heart of my practice — it’s where everything begins. It allows me to collect fragments of the world, often mundane or peripheral, which I later distort and recontextualise. Photoshop is my construction site, my theatre, a place where I layer, manipulate, and build tension between the real and the imagined. The process is immersive, almost fugue-like; I lose sense of time and slip into something more instinctive, I take this process as I would prayer. I have to be in a place that allows me to disassociate.

How do you want people to feel when they experience your work?

I want people to confront the questions they haven’t yet asked — to feel something just out of reach, in a space that feels visually complete but emotionally unsettled. Nothing in my work is certain, but it gave me answers I didn’t know I needed. We rarely know how an image should make us feel, and yet some hold a strange kind of power. I’d love for someone to look at my work and, for a moment, share the thoughts I couldn’t put into words — to join me in the place where I got lost.

What does a typical day in your studio look like?

There’s rarely a strict structure — just a sense of falling into the work. I usually start by revisiting old photographs, fragments I’ve collected. Sometimes I know what I’m looking for; other times it’s more like a visual hunt. Once I open Photoshop, the process takes over. I build scenes layer by layer, trying things that don’t make sense at first. It’s not about chasing an outcome — more about losing myself in the rhythm, letting instinct take the lead. There are pauses, doubts, and occasional breakthroughs. Most days end in silence, just me sitting with an image, wondering where it wants to be next.

What dreams or hopes do you have for your artistic journey?

I want the work to speak louder than my name. To live on walls — in galleries, yes, but also in kitchens, bedrooms, offices, on buildings — wherever people stop and stare without knowing why. I’m not interested in being a name people drop; I want to be the piece they remember. Notoriety doesn’t mean much. Attention does. If someone walks into a room and the image pulls them in — even for a second — that’s the dream.

Ed Robeson COLLECTION

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A Path Of Which We Walk