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 languageFreudian 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
Brassai born Gyula Halasz (1899-1984) Involuntary Sculpture 1933
Minotaure magazine â—?
BrassaĂŻ'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, BrassaĂŻ 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 Bellmer Doll (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) â—?
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