1

Unit 3: The Personal InvestigationSurrealismIntroduction

This unit is designed to introduce A2 level photography students to the key ideas of the Surrealists and to challenge them to create appropriate photographic responses. In his essay "Surrealist Situation of the Object" (1935) André Breton remarks on the way that photography had affected the development of painting and how, "unable to engage in the seemingly futile struggle with photography, painting was forced to retreat and reorganize its ranks in an invulnerable position, under the necessity of visually expressing internal perception".

Man Ray is perhaps the best

known of the photographers who were engaged in and/or influenced by Surrealism in the thirties and beyond. Other photographers and artists who used photography in their practice and were influenced by Surrealism include Max Ernst, Claude Cahun, Georges Hugnet, Hans Bellmer, Frederick Sommer, Clarence John Laughlin, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Brassai, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dora Maar, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Mari Mahr, Francesca Woodman, Erwin Murm and Duane Michals. According to Walter Benjamin, photography offers to consciousness modes of reality that would remain in the unconscious without its action:

"It is through photography that we discover the existence of this optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis".

A2 LEVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory.

André Breton

A2 P

HOTO

GRA

PHY

- UNI

T 3:

PER

SONA

L IN

VEST

IGAT

ION

2

Ideas & ActivitiesA2

PHO

TOG

RAPH

Y - U

NIT

3: P

ERSO

NAL

INVE

STIG

ATIO

N

Students will be encouraged to explore a variety of approaches, techniques, genres and individual styles in this unit. They may include:

• Automatism & Appropriation. Explore the role of automatic writing in Surrealism. Make a collage and/or poem using found images/text. Invent a system to incorporate chance into the process of selecting images/text.

• Games. The Surrealists attempted to embrace the laws of chance in their creation of art works. Invent a Surrealist game using photography E.g. The Exquisite Corpse

• Keep a dream diary. Use notes made in the diary to stimulate a series of images.

• Night photographs based on a study of Brassai’s Paris at Night. Explore the hidden/secret city. Consider technical issues such as tone, shadows, artificial light, ambient lighting and flash, long shutter speeds etc.

• Involuntary Sculptures. Look at the photographs made by Brassai of mundane objects transformed. Consider camera angle, depth of field, scale, dramatic lighting etc.

• Graffiti. Look carefully at Brassai’s images of graffiti. Construct your own study of contemporary graffiti along similar lines.

• Text and Image. The Surrealists were fascinated by the relationship between words and images. Explore this theme with reference to one or more key works of at/texts

• Experiments in the darkroom. Negatives, solarisation, Rayographs, Decalcomania, mirrors, prisms and lots more besides. The surrealists were drawn to the magic of the darkroom.

• Taboo. Breaking rules and defying conventions was a Surrealist pastime. Create one or more images which explore this idea.

• Surreal Self-Portraits. Several Surrealists adopted alter egos as part of their work, changing gender, adopting disguises and questioning the nature of identity. Make your own Surreal Self-Portraits exploring a range of strategies.

• One Minute Sculptures. Explore the work of Erwin Wurm and his ‘one minute sculptures’. Consider the role of performance in Surrealism and the ways in which they questioned the nature of artistic genres (see also Brassai’s ‘Involuntary Sculptures’)

• Photomontage using found images from a variety of sources, exploring the idea of chance associations.

• 13 Clues to a fictitious crime based on the work of the same name by Mari Mahr. Look at sequencing of images, staged imagery, composition, narrative etc.

• Photo Sequences. Explore the work of Duane Michals and the creation of photographic narratives. How could you represent a dream story in a sequence of photographs?

• The Body. How did the Surrealists present the human body? In what ways can the body be transformed by photography?

• Trespassing on the private. Take a sequence of photographs of people eating, sleeping, reading which explore the nature of private thoughts/activities.

• The Inner Eye. Take a series of photographs wearing a blindfold or looking in the opposite direction.

• Literary sources. Surrealism was as much a literary movement as it was about the visual arts. What kind of literature did they celebrate? How can photography re-present the ideas in poetry, fairy tales and surrealist novels?

• Assemblage. The chance, poetic association of different objects and materials is a theme popular with the Surrealists. Construct an assemblage, featuring photographic images, which explores this idea.

• Observation and surveillance. Watching, spying, following, observing. These apparently voyeuristic preoccupations appear in the work of several Surrealists.

3

The vice named surrealism is the immoderate and impassioned use of the stupefacient image or rather of the uncontrolled provocation of the image for its own sake and for the element of unpredictable perturbation and of metamorphosis which it introduces into the domain of representation; for each image on each occasion forces you to revise the entire Universe.

LOUIS ARAGON, Paris Peasant

A2 P

HOTO

GRA

PHY

- UNI

T 3:

PER

SONA

L IN

VEST

IGAT

ION

ResourcesThere are several texts in the sixth form photography room and reference library which are directly relevant to this topic:

L’Amour Fou – Photography and Surrealism (Abbeville Press, 1985)

Surrealism – Desire Unbound (Princeton University Press, 2001)

Man Ray Photographs (Thames and Hudson, 2001)

Une Semaine De Bonte: A Surrealistic Novel in Collage by Max Ernst (Dover Publication, 1976)

Between Ourselves – The Photographs of Mari Mahr (Serpent’s Tale, 1994)

Mari Mahr – Isolated Incidents (The Photographers’ Gallery, 1989)

Erwin Wurm (The Photographers’ Gallery, 2001)

Brandt (Thames and Hudson, 1999)

Francesca Woodman (Scalo, 1998)

Haunter of Ruins - The Photography of Clarence John Laughlin (Bullfinch, 1997)

Brassai Graffiti (Flammarion, 2002)

Brassai – No Ordinary Eyes (Thames and Hudson, 2000)

The Essential Duane Michals by Marco Livingstone (Bullfinch, 1997)

In addition, the library has monographs and catalogues featuring a wide range of photographers and artists whose work is relevant to this theme.