Surrealism and photography
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Atget's Paris photos are the forerunners of Surrealist photography" --Walter Benjamin, A Small History of Photography |
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Photography came to occupy a central role in Surrealist activity.
In the works of Man Ray and Maurice Tabard, the use of such techniques as multiple exposure, montage, and solarization evoked the union of dream and reality.
Examples of surrealist use of photography include Hans Bellmer photographing his mechanical dolls; René Magritte creating photographic equivalents of his paintings; Père Ubu by Dora Maar depicting a baby armadillo and La Prochaine chambre, an anonymous photo on the cover La Révolution surréaliste (no. 11), showing to men standing around a manhole. André Breton included 44 photographs in his surrealist novel Nadja.
Eugène Atget was a favorite of the surrealists.
A selection of surrealist photographers from the exhibition Begierde im Blick (2005) includes Hans Bellmer, Jacques-André Boiffard, Brassaï, Josef Breitenbach, André Breton, Claude Cahun, Georges Hugnet, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Eli Lotar, Man Ray, Marcel Mariën, Lee Miller, Paul Nougé, Jean Painlevé, Gaston Paris and Jindřich Štyrský.
References
- L'Amour fou : Photography and Surrealism (1986), an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery
- Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent (2003) by David Bate
- Begierde im Blick (2005), an exhibition about the early days of surrealist photography at the Kunsthalle Hamburg
- La Subversion des Images, 2009 exhibition at the Centre Pompidou
- Ghosts of the Black Chamber: Experimental, Dada and Surrealist Photography 1918-1948 (2010) by Candice Black
- Appropriated Photographs in French Surrealist Periodicals, 1924-1939 (2016) by Linda Steer
See also
- Fine art photography
- André Kertész and his 1933 surrealist series Distortions.
- Photocollage
- Surrealism and film