Surrealist photography

Surrealist photography

Years active	1920s–1940s

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Surrealist photography is photography associated with Surrealism. The term usually covers both photographs made by Surrealists and photographs that came to carry Surrealist meanings through their use in Surrealist journals and books. From the 1920s to the 1940s, photographs appeared throughout Surrealist magazines, books, exhibitions, and collaborations, including journals such as La Révolution surréaliste and Minotaure and books such as André Breton's Nadja.

History

Photography did not fit neatly into Surrealism at first. It was commonly tied to visual fact, while Surrealism turned toward dreams, chance, automatism, and the marvelous. That mismatch was part of the attraction. Bouqueret traces some of the background to Dada, especially to photomontage and cameraless processes such as the photogram, and points to Christian Schad's early "Schadographs" and Man Ray's later rayographs as important precedents.

After 1924, photographs began to appear more regularly in Surrealist journals, books, and collaborations. La Révolution surréaliste became the movement's main early journal, and photography there was used not just as illustration but as part of the movement's own visual language.

By the later 1920s and into the 1930s, photography had spread across journals, books, advertising, fashion, and exhibition culture. Bouqueret places side by side figures such as Man Ray, Brassaï, Dora Maar, Claude Cahun, Hans Bellmer, Maurice Tabard, and Raoul Ubac. That list itself gives a sense of how varied Surrealist photography had become by the 1930s.

The Surrealist reception of Eugène Atget points in the same direction. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that his photographs were republished in La Révolution surréaliste in 1926 and were valued there as uncanny images of Paris. His case is often cited because it shows that Surrealist photography was shaped not only by new techniques, but also by selection, republication, and reinterpretation.

The Second World War broke up the Paris-centred networks through which Surrealist photography had circulated in the 1930s, but it did not end them. D'Alessandro and Gale stress the continued importance of journals under wartime conditions, and publications such as London Bulletin, La part du sable, Dyn, and VVV show how Surrealist exchange moved through dispersed print networks rather than a single centre.

Practices

Surrealist photographers used montage, solarization, multiple exposure, and cameraless printing. Man Ray's rayographs are one of the best-known examples. Darkroom experiment was only one part of the field. It also included staged photographs, object photographs, and works whose effect depended on pose, performance, or the arrangement of things before the camera.

Surrealist photography also made use of ordinary and found photographs. Museum accounts note the reuse of snapshots, movie stills, anthropological photographs, and medical or police images in Surrealist contexts, where captions, juxtaposition, sequencing, publication, and republication could change how such material was read.

International developments

The field did not remain confined to Paris. Walker notes that early surveys already extended beyond France and the United States, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's guide to Surrealism Beyond Borders presents Surrealism as a network linking Paris with places such as Prague, Bucharest, and Brussels. The same guide and catalogue also point to Surrealist activity in the Netherlands, including the milieu around De Schone Zakdoek and Emiel van Moerkerken.

It also took distinct forms in the Americas. The Met's materials for Surrealism Beyond Borders treat Mexico City as one of the major nodes of this history, and wartime New York City became another through journals such as VVV.

In Japan, Surrealist photography did not develop through a single national group. It took shape instead across overlapping avant-garde circles of photographers, poets, critics, painters, and designers. The 1937 Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten (Exhibition of Overseas Surrealist Works) helped set off new work in the medium.

Two of the most active regional formations were Osaka and Nagoya. In Nagoya, photography was closely tied to poetry, translation, and small-scale publishing. Kansuke Yamamoto was one of the photographers active in this milieu. He moved across photographic and literary circles in the city, published the Surrealist journal Yoru no Funsui in 1938, and later took part in the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde milieu.

See also

• Surrealism
• History of photography
• Surrealist photography in Japan

Further reading

• Bouqueret, Christian (2008). Surrealist Photography. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500410929. Search this book on
• D'Alessandro, Stephanie; Gale, Matthew, eds. (2021). Surrealism Beyond Borders. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Tate Modern. ISBN 9781588397270. Search this book on
• Stojković, Jelena (2020). Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. ISBN 9781350120037. Search this book on

Category:Surrealism Category:History of photography Category:Avant-garde art Category:20th-century art movements

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