Surrealism is periodically recycled as a style and as described by Andy Grundberg in his essay ‘surrealism runs like a pulse through art photography’s modernist presence.’¹ In 1924 Andre Breton published his first surrealist manifesto and was based on the Freudian notions of the subconscious mind as a platform for the artist or art photographer. In terms of photography, surrealism can be seen as the precursor to postmodernism ‘As an avatar of deconstructivist practice and theory, it supplies a rationale both for photography’s position within the art world and for those photographic practices that seek to disorient and disrupt our conventional responses to images.’² 

Photographs can be seen as surreal in and of themselves, they act to displace, disrupt and disorientate the viewer. In Susan Sontag’s essay ‘On photography’ she writes: 

‘The photographers who concentrated on interfering with the supposedly superficial realism of the photograph were those who most conveyed photography’s surreal properties’³ 

As with surrealist painting, photography alternates between representational and the ‘automatic’ abstract styles. May Ray remains to this day the anthesis of surrealist photography. His images typically switch between these two styles, his images such as ‘Le violon d’Ingres’ are pure constructs, choreographed and designed, whereas his ‘Rayographs’ rely upon a more random act of chance or pure experimentation.  

More contemporary photographers have a tendency for the grotesque or theatrical such as the work of Joel-Peter Witkin, Frederick Sommer and Les Krims.  If we first look to the work of Witkin who’s images are meticulously constructed and often grotesque featuring disembodied limbs to create dreamlike still life scenes. Wikin’s image ‘Harvest, 1984’ is something akin to the 17^th Century Flemish painters  with their images of fruit and game but offers a more macabre interpretation.  

Frederick Sommer’s images can be seen in the same vein as Witkin’s in the use of the grotesque to illicit a reaction from the viewer. However, unlike Wikin, Sommer does not (obviously) arrange his subjects, there are no fancy set pieces.  Images such as ‘Chicken’ and ‘Jack rabbit’ are more automatic in the sense of a document of something found. This sits well within the origins of surrealism and that of tapping into the subconscious.  

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Bridging this divide of styles is Les Krim’s work, that has a mix of autonomous and choreographed images, ‘self-operation’ appears choreographed whilst ‘Deer slayer’ looks to be a documentary image of strangers coming back from a hunt. Of the three photographers I am more drawn to Krim’s work, perhaps because of his use of the human form as in ‘Human Being as a sculpture’ or because there is a simplicity to his work that connects with my subconscious.  

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There is something to be said about subtlety, especially in surrealism as all too often images that have been described as surreal are over thought. This was an issue that Breton had with the work of Salvador Dali, in fact many of the Parisian surrealists shunned Dali having said his work to be too contrived and controlled to have come from the subconscious. The same could have been said about Yves Tanguy, who’s work is comparable to that of Dali.  Photographers who work in a similar styling of Dali are Jerry Uelsmann and Clarence John Laughlin, whilst illustrating something dreamlike their images my lack the subtlety that I admire in early surrealist work, especially when comparing to Man Ray’s iconic image ‘Les Larmes’.  

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References

¹ Grundy. A (1990), Bay Press, The Critical Image: essays on contemporary photography, ‘On the dissecting table: The unnatural coupling of surrealism and photography’ pp. 80. 

²  Grundy. A (1990), Bay Press, The Critical Image: essays on contemporary photography, ‘On the dissecting table: The unnatural coupling of surrealism and photography’ pp. 86. 

³ Sontag. S (1979) Penguin Books, ‘On Photography’ pp. 52.