After years of crafting digital worlds for films like The Martian and Doctor Strange at Lucasfilm, Diebold made an unusual pivot. He left the gleaming screens behind for the messier, more immediate world of analogue photography. However, he also brought something crucial with him: an understanding of how to build worlds from scratch, to sculpt light and space until reality bends to match the visions in his head.

His working method feels almost alchemical. He starts with large-format cameras and silver prints, but that’s just the beginning. Costumes arehand-sewn and backgrounds, hand-painted. Models interact with distorted mirrors that fracture their reflections into something otherworldly. Sometimes he will photograph a scene, print it, paint over the print, then photograph it again, through warped glass. Each layer adds another degree of separation from conventional reality, yet somehow makes the final image feel more present.

Diebold's photographs are themselves a kind of echo of his digital past, reverberating through the analogue present, like dreams bleeding into waking life, or the moment when control gives way to accident and something unexpected emerges. He describes losing control as essential to his process, where the moment when his rational, organised nature collides with chaos and produces something he couldn’t have planned.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMON DIEBOLD TEXT BY DEFNE ÇEVİK