Surrealism and Photography

(1924- )

Historical Context

● Movement based in Paris ● Andre Breton publishes Surrealist Manifesto in

1924● Interest in the irrational ● Concerned with truth above realism● Influenced by Freud’s theory of the

unconscious● The interpretation of Dreams (1899)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)Austrian neurologist

● Conscious mind ● Everyday thoughts,

feelings observations needed for the human to function

● Unconscious● Contains socially

‘unacceptable’ ideas eg: wishes, desires( sexual or other), traumatic memories, painful emotions

● The unconscious may surface through symptoms which are difficult to explain

● Freud sought to uncover these desires of the unconscious through psychoanalysis and in doing so free patients from the symptoms

● Unconscious may be revealed through language- Freudian slip

● Treatment attempted to tap into the unconscious by use of meditation techniques, dream analysis, a talking cure and other random association techniques eg: word games

Lee Miller (1907–1977), Untitled (Exploding Hand), c. 1930.

● For the surrealists photography and the use of the camera was seen as a method of sidestepping the rational mind because there was an element of chance involved in the process and the camera could be used to freeze the naturally occurring chaos of the world

Brassaiborn Gyula Halasz (1899-1984)

Involuntary Sculpture 1933

Minotaure magazine

● Brassaï's photographs of Involuntary Sculptures in number 3-4 of Minotaure from December 1933 emblematize the journal's focus on ethnographic modernism. His magnification of everyday Western ephemera transforms them into mysterious aesthetic objects comparable in their strangeness to the exotic tribal art brought back from ethnographic expeditions and presented in the pages of the same luxurious journal. Through this implicit comparison, Brassaï problematizes the Western primitivist notion of the tribal fetish and concurrently asks whether there might not be something sacred buried in our most ordinary and familiar everyday objects.

What is it?

Paris by Night , 1933

● The book is a celebration of the edges of society

● The ordinary next to the extraordinary

● No social message

Hans BellmerDoll (1935)

● Born in German dominated area of Poland in 1902

● Studied in Berlin – Dada● Moved from there to

Paris● Response to the fair

haired stereotype of the Ayrian body

Man Ray

● Solarisation● Print or neg is briefly

exposed to light during development

● Reversal of tones especially at edges

Raoul Ubac (1910-1985)Belgian

Ubac “Brulage”

● Film is burned or melted to produce swirling shapes

Claude Cahun (1894-1954)French artist, photographer, writer

Self portrait in cupboard Self portrait 1927

Carrefour (1930)

● Book of dreams illustrated by photomontages

Kertesz/ Cartier Bresson

Rene Magritte

● Belgian surrealist painter

● Challenges our understanding of reality and representation

● The relationship between word and symbol or sign

Key features of Surrealist photography

Themes/Subjects

● The female nude representing sex

● The unconscious ● The body vs the mind● Ordinary/extraordinary

Visual Language

● Photomontage● Strange juxtapositions of

the everyday● Symbolic use of objects● Black and white ● Solarisation/ Brulage

Photographers for Blog Task 6

● Man Ray● Lee Miller● Andre Kertsz● Claude Cahun● Raoul Ubac● Henri Cartier Bresson● Hans Belmer● Brassai● Maurice Tabard