Photography's role in Surrealism

 The Surrealism movement aims to recreate the dreamy, 'in between' moments of everyday life that we now describe as ‘surreal’, through the means of art. The movement started in Paris in 1924 when Andre Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto which in a summary aims ‘to free one’s mind from the past and from everyday reality so one can arrive at truths one has never known’. (source). It focuses on an interest in the irrational, often using a juxtaposition of objects and often not making sense.

                The role of photography in Surrealism strives to go beyond the rational with the use of a camera – an actual machine to not only capture, but distort and manipulate the way we perceive the world. I think that photography is a successful medium in portraying the surreal, in that it is able to capture images of real life that when presented in a surreal way, have a more intense effect as they are images of real objects, as opposed to painted representations. There is a truth in photography; people are more likely to believe photographs as they know they are usually a captured image of reality. However this belief is taken advantage of by Surrealists, creating images that force you to look twice to see what they are and the reason behind them being photographed.

                Sigmund Freud inspired the movement with his theory of the unconscious mind – that the things we have a desire to do but are repressed from doing, leads to desires being hidden, developing a dark ‘unconscious’.  An example of the ‘in between’ moments that inspire surrealism being shown through an image is Brassai’s series ‘Involuntary Sculptures’ from 1933, and in particular, the image of a folded and rolled up bus ticket. At first it is unclear as to what the image is, as it takes an almost abstract, sculptural form as the title of the series suggests. The usually mundane object of a bus ticket is shown in the image to be folded up and rolled, as if it has been absent-mindedly played with in a moment of boredom on a bus. This is the type of in between moments that surrealists are inspired by, where the unconscious takes over momentarily, whilst the mind is busy on other thoughts.

                Freud had methods to ‘reveal’ the desires of the unconscious through psychoanalytical exercises such as dream analysis and word games such as word association, where he would say a word and ask the person to say the first word that comes into their head in relation to this, generating seemingly random associations that may reveal the unconscious.  Photography was seen as a possible visual equivalent to such word association – with some photographers taking a haphazard approach of not looking through the viewfinder, or randomly photographing whatever comes into their head or in front of the lens. For photographers, the use of cameras were a method of sidestepping the rational mind, as there is an element of chance and chaos in photographing randomly. More modern movements in photography such as Lomography have clearly drawn on this surrealist approach.

Visual features and motifs of surrealism and in particular, surrealist photography include:

• ·         Body vs. Mind

• ·         Female Nude (often representing sex & desires of the unconscious)

• ·         Ordinary/extraordinary

• ·         The Unconscious (that could relate to the unconscious desire of the viewer)

• ·         Symbolic use of objects

• ·         Strange juxtapositions of the everyday (leaving viewers with an unsettling feeling of what should be normal)

• ·         Practices such as photomontage (fitting with the combination of random objects) and Solarisation/Brulage (creating surreal visual effects)

 

Another key figure in the Surrealism movement was Man Ray, also using photography as his chosen medium to portray the surreal. He used the technique of Solarisation to create a surreal and visually interesting effect to his images. This involved exposing either the print or negative to light briefly, whilst it is developing, resulting in a complete or partial reversal of tones, especially around the edges of objects in an image, creating a black outline around things, creating an artificial effect. This again manipulates the belief that a viewer has in photography, that the image is an image of reality, and therefore creates a sense of confusion and unsettlement when you realise there is something strange about the tones in the image, especially when you do not know how the image has been created to look like that.

Similarly, Raoul Ubac also uses processes in the darkroom to create surreal and confusing images. He used the technique brûlage which included heating the negative in the darkroom, which caused the emulsion to melt and form a deformation. The print created from these negatives showed patterned generated by the deformations, as opposed to the photographic equipment used. This conforms to the surrealist manifesto as it is a way of creating images purely out of chance.

 I really like the effect of this technique, in particular on this image where it has created a ghostly effect with all of the bodies merging together. As soon as I saw this image the surreal shapes reminded me of fire and tribal patterns, which lead me to think of some of MGMT's music videos which also involve a lot of repetition of figures and reversal of tones. I also like the idea behind the technique of burning the negatives, and the fact that an image is being created purely by chance with the photographer for once having little control of the result appeals to me, and is something I would like to experiment with in the darkroom.