Toronto based designer, Monika Traikov combines her own family photos with digital decoupaging to breath a new life into old memories. Her geometric shapes bring a futuristic element to the vintage imagery, however Monika’s juxtaposition meshes together perfectly. She explains her process in an interview with OTM Zine:

“The works explore the illusion of memories and nostalgia, reflecting a constant yearning for the past, often in an idealized or distorted form. The way we remember moments are often glossed over, or warped in a beautiful way. Often, feelings, colours and emotions are remembered more than the tangible. I used my personal experiences with memories to deconstruct my old family photographs, and create a new, idealized, and illusionary moments. Each image evokes a certain mood and emotion encased in a memory- whether it is an eerie memory that you can’t quite put back together, or a dreamy, fantastical memory that you will never forget. The series tells a fragmented story of different emotions, moods, and moments that translates these foreign family photographs into something familiar and thought provoking. I wanted to establish a familiarity in each image, allowing viewers to extract their own personal meaning and be able to relate them to their own memories and past.

The photographs are scanned into the computer digitally, and are changed through stretching, pixelating, shifting, or layering. Using a digital medium contrasts the organic elements of the photographs by adding structure, organization and a more methodological element to the images. The post processing helps to unify the essence of past and present.” - Monika Traikov

To see more of Monika’s amazing art, check out her website, journal and behance page.