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Photography and surrealism

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What is a surrealist photograph?

of Dreams offers a textbook model for the analysis of historical images, following their associations along the paths of mechanisms of the dream-work to reconstruct the meaningful context of the ‘designied’ meanings. An example might help clarify what I mean by taking a well-known image from surrealism (see Figure ).

The Meaning of RevengeA full-page image in La Révolution surréaliste dis-

plays a montage of portrait photographs around the gure of Germaine Berton, whose historical mean-ing for surrealism has, I argue, today been ‘lost’. Often reproduced, this image is usually described in commentaries on surrealism as a celebration of the shocking fact that Germaine Berton, the ‘anarchist’, had shot the right-wing political leader Marius Plateau.60 So the discussion of this picture (always brief) is linked to a political act of violence. This she had in fact committed, in January , almost two years before the surrealists published her image in this issue of the surrealist magazine.6 But what is important for the publication of the montage in the surrealist periodical is that the image of Germaine Berton had another topical association besides her assassination of Plateau two years earlier that everyone discussing this picture in surrealism assumes as the most important reason for it. Actually, the publication of this montage in the rst issue of La Révolution surréaliste on December was more topically linked to the fact that the woman depicted in the central image, Germaine Berton, had just killed herself with poison on November . This suicide has never been mentioned in subsequent discussions on surrealism, although it was a widely known public fact at the time. So Germaine Berton had an association with death in two senses. More than a political scandal, Germaine Berton was the image of a personal tragedy. When we look at the issue of La Révolution surréaliste in which this montage appeared, what pervades its pages is the inquiry: ‘Is suicide a solution?’ Reports of suicide cases were printed throughout the magazine, extracts from newspaper cuttings on recent suicides were cited as evidence of its currency. In the ‘Preface’ (or editor’s page) are remarks on suicide which can be read as a

Maurice Nadeau, The History of Surrealism, trans. Rich-ard Howard (London: Plantin, ), p. . Iwan Goll, who is one of those pictured around the image of Germaine Berton, published a book on her shortly afterwards, Germaine Berton, die rote Jungfrau (Berlin: Verlag die Schmiede, ).

It is Maurice Nadeau who is responsible for this historical date ‘slip’ (History of Surrealism, p. ). He reports that Germaine Berton ‘had just murdered … ’ at the time of the rst issue. It is quite clear that his text should really read ‘she had just commit-ted suicide … ’ Given that Nadeau’s source for this was most likely his own memory, it is tempting to speculate on the motive for this ‘lapsus’, which turns her into a ‘murderess’, as he so sharply puts it, when she was in fact acquitted of murder.