Surrealism: Paraphrase Task
How was photography important to Surrealist practise?
Mary Warner Marien provides a short history of Surrealism, looking at the importance of psychologist Freud and the use of the camera in the 'transformation of human perception'. When talking of the Surrealist movement Marien describes it to crucially need and use photography as a tool to depict ''conjunctions of the mundane'' {Marien 2010 p254}with Surrealism all other preconceived ideas and established concepts we have as a society are reversed and challenged and this is vocalised through the medium of photography.
Surrealist photographic practise consists of randomly associated items within a single frame which aims to cut through ''rational thought to reach the fertile unconscious'' {Marien 2010 p254}
Raoul Ubac
Surrealism often features prints that have been manipulated and this image by Raoul Ubac is very stylized, it being a ''Brulage'' in which film is burned or melted to produce swirling shapes. It also features the female nude, repeatedly printed which could represent the idea of the ordinary verses the extraordinary, a common theme amongst surrealist art.
Surrealism centers around the idea of the unconscious so this image references this concept through it's dreamlike quality and strange subject matter.
