Pedestrians walking across a public square in Stockholm between June 7th-12th, 2011 dangled dangerously into a triangular sinkhole – or at least, it appeared that way, depending on where you were standing. ‘Mind Your Step’, an amazing street illusion by artist Erik Johansson, turned Stockholm’s Sergels torg into a fun, interactive art exhibit that tricks the eye into seeing a three-dimensional hole in the ground when viewed from a certain angle.

The illusion is similar to those achieved by 3D street artists working in chalk, except that this one was created off-site and assembled using large printed sheets. Johansson provided a yellow platform that read ‘Mind Your Step’ so that viewers could see it from the vantage point that would allow the illusion to come together.

“For a long time I have been doing creative retouch and surreal montages. I’ve always been quite fascinated by perspective illusions in my images and some time ago I got an idea of trying to realize one in a public space somewhere. My idea was to put a photo in an environment and actually trick people that it would have depth. Street illusions isn’t something new, but I wanted to try to make it as a photo instead of drawing and painting the streets.” See how Johansson achieved this effect in the ‘Behind the Scenes’ video below.

“Photography is my medium and I wanted it to look as realistic as possible, just like my photos. I was introduced to a project called Generation 7 where seven young creative people get to realize their dream project. This was a perfect opportunity to actually realize this idea for real using my imagination, camera and PC.”

In the Age of Photoshop, few images are surprising anymore – but every now and then, you come across one that makes you do a double take and spend a few moments thinking, “how’d they do that?” Swedish photographer Erik Johansson has a portfolio packed full of such images, blending reality and artificiality together so seamlessly, one wonders whether he’s an artist or a magician.

Johansson seems to live in a surreal world where roads unfurl like fabric, giant mirrored objects dangle from the sky, humans spring forth from the soil like potted plants and disturbingly elastic faces pop out of joint to swallow oranges whole.

The Swedish artist takes all of his photos himself and manipulates them digitally in Photoshop CS4, spending 10-20 hours on each photo. “I got my first digital camera when I turned 15, I did some changes to the photos and thought it was fun. But I really started in 2007 when I bought my first SLR camera. That is when I started to do some serious photo manipulations,” Johansson told Abduzeedo.

In an interview with Don’t Panic, Johansson said, “My goal is to make pictures as realistic as possible, but at the same time impossible. Many photographers try to look weird, so I try to make my shots as plausible as possible. I would say I try to use humour a lot and I rarely have a didactic message. Sometimes I want to tell something, but mostly I want people to interpret.”

“A lot of young people think they’re fascinating but the older generation don’t really believe in Photoshop. They think photos should be a pure image. Myself, I’m never satisfied with them but I think that’s a healthy instinct.”