Photographer and visual artist Kyle Callahan has made a name for himself with his eye-popping works and his unique and personal toy photography

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Chances are that if you’ve seen the work of photographer and visual artist Kyle Callahan, it made an immediate and lasting impression. A graduate of College of the North Atlantic’s Graphic Design Program, Callahan delves into his personal interests and passions when the time comes to create. The end result are some of the more eye-popping and deeply entertaining works from any artist working in this province today.

Callahan has helped popularize what he calls toy photography, utilizing some notable characters and dropping them in familiar local scenes, with a brilliant end result. Examples of his more popular works include the eye-grabbing East Meets East, which sees the mighty Godzilla trudge through St. John’s Harbour, or A Dar Knight at the Basilica, featuring Batman in front of, you guessed it, the Basilica.

“I always did toy photography, but it was always in the studio learning lighting and depth of field and all of that jazz,” Callahan explains. “The piece with St. John’s City and Godzilla in the middle, that’s where things started to take off for me. It got me some attention and I started to play around with more toys down around St. John’s.”

From Legos to Deadpool, Spider-Man and more, if you happen to be downtown perusing the many shops and side-streets, you might just bump into Callahan tinkering with some inspiration.

“I’ll be going around downtown Water Street, putting them on the sidewalk and getting funny looks from people. I like the reactions I get from people. People will walk by and do a double-take and you’ll see that childlike smile on their face, touching in with their inner child.”

Callahan has tapped into an area of art seemingly untouched by his fellow Newfoundlanders. His work has grown so popular that he has taken up residency in the downtown shop Posie Row & Co.

But Callahan is anything but a one-trick-pony. His services include a wide range of options for any manner of taste or scenario, including weddings, special events, concerts and much more. At the end of the day, it’s his toy art that has everyone talking, and certainly an avenue that lets him live out his own personal fandom.

“People come in and they find their own niche. I try to open up my own variety of pictures to everybody. It’s mostly towards my own personal interests. I put my own passion into the piece, or try to. If I follow someone else’s fandom or something I’m not into at all I may not know what I’m doing or how it should look.

“Every nook and cranny you can crawl in you can find something new,” he adds. “Newfoundlanders are such an interesting people and they can make anything out of everything.”

For more on Kyle Callahan visit kylecallahan.ca or visit Posie Row & Co on 210-214 Duckworth Street in St. John’s.