Who are the famous surrealist photographers in history, and what are their masterpieces?

Surrealism photography is a school that appeared in the field of photography art during the decline of Dadaism, and it rose in the 1930s.

This school has strict art courses and theories. They believe that it is a task that classical artists have already completed to express the real world with realistic creative methods, while the mission of modern artists is to explore the new and unexplored "spiritual world" of mankind. Therefore, people's subconscious activities, accidental inspiration, psychopathy and dreams have become the objects of surrealist photographers' deliberate performance.

Surrealism in photography, like Dada photographers, uses scissors, paste and darkroom technology as the main modeling means to pile up, piece together and reorganize the scenes in the works, and combines specific details with arbitrary exaggeration, deformation, ellipsis and symbol to create a surreal "artistic realm" between reality and fantasy, concreteness and abstraction. So the effect is strange, absurd and mysterious.

The founders of this genre are British photographer Winston and American Bruggaier (1880- 1945). The real finisher is British stage photographer Kyle Bing (1905-? ), in his own creation, he combined the virtual reality of "surrealism" with the real reality, creating a realm that is both illusory and real. For example, his self-portrait of Kyle Bing in 1946 is a typical surrealist work. It was shot through four exposures: one front, two sides and one eye at a time.

Famous photographers of this genre include Paerhan, a painter engaged in surrealist highlights; Deformed human photographer Brent; Portrait and publicity photographers Carson, Blumenthal, Lorraine, Halsman, Lion, etc.

Surrealism photography-origin

Surrealism art originated from the Surrealism Manifesto published by French writer André Breton in 1924. In this manifesto, he wrote: "Surrealism is a purely mental unconscious activity of human beings. People can express this real thought process orally, in writing or in other ways-the free activity of thought, without any rational control and without any aesthetic and moral prejudice. " Therefore, the philosophical basis of this art school is henri bergson's intuitionism and Freud's psychoanalysis. In their view, people's truest feelings can only be found in the subconscious and dreams. Therefore, people's subconscious activities, sudden inspiration, psychopathy and dream world are the vast world where all arts gallop.

Surrealism Photography —— Author's Brief Introduction

Man ray (1890- 1976, USA) is a tireless photographer and artist who has participated in Dadaism and surrealism. Instead of using a camera, he tried to put some objects directly between the light source and the photosensitive material to make photos through the transmission of contours and shadows. Later generations called this kind of "photo" without negative film "Man's ray photo" or "object shadow photo". He also used special effects such as darkroom treatment and multiple exposures to combine some irrelevant images in a distorted or omitted, illogical and abnormal way, creating a strange, absurd and mysterious "artistic realm" between reality and fantasy, concrete and abstract. The picture is full of symbols and hints, which makes the connotation of the work flicker.

Philip Halsman, an American surrealist photographer, once shot and published a surrealist photo album "Dali's Beard" for his good friend and a famous Spanish surrealist painter, which showed his extraordinary imagination. One of the photos is called "Dali Atomikas", which is inspired by the atomic theory of modern physics and "depicts everything as semi-suspended". Everything in the picture, including Dali, cat, water, drawing board and chair, floats in the air like in a weightless environment. It can be seen that surreal photography takes advantage of the modeling characteristics of photography art and uses photography as a brush to express some ideas of the author.

There is another form of surreal photography, and some works created by henri cartier bresson are the representatives of this kind of surreal photography. Although the pictures of these works are "documentary", they are only artistic symbols used to materialize the instantaneous consciousness movement in the photographer's mind. His creation tends to be "psychological liberalization" and purely intuitive expression. Through free association, he created freely, casually, loosely and without being dominated by logic, but not all of them were "endless imagination, endless jumping of feelings and disorderly accumulation of grotesque images". In Henri Cartier-Bresson's own words, it is "observing things all the time, just like dancing, swinging between consciousness and subconscious, suddenly discovering and grasping those instantaneous, natural and intuitive landscapes", "I am not so much a photographer as an etcher or watercolor painter ... I am a bunch of nerves waiting for opportunities, appearing in the landscape again and again. Suddenly shooting, this is a natural happiness, a collection of activities, time and space at a certain moment. "

Surrealism photography has various modeling methods. For example, Bill Brandt's deformation, Herbert Bayer's "Photoplastic Photography" and man ray's multiple exposures all have their own merits.

Surrealism photography-Surrealism photography

1September 999 12, a surrealist film exhibition "Surrealism-Daniel Filipa's Photography Exhibition" was held in Guggenheim Museum, new york. This exhibition includes rare works by man ray, Pierre Molina, salvador dali, Dora Maar, etc., and records the "surrealist fans" feasting their eyes.

Surrealism photography came into being in 1930s, and was deeply influenced by surrealism literature and art and surrealism painting. Surrealism seems to have become history today, especially in China, where surrealism photography died before it was produced. Even if it can appear, it is only "imitation surrealism photography" or "pseudo surrealism photography". However, as an important part of the history of photography, it is necessary for us to understand it.

It is difficult to interpret surreal photography in words, because such works are not records of real experiences. It is very difficult to comment on surreal photography with our experience, and we can only make a far-fetched understanding of surreal photography from its syntax and proposition.

Because surrealist photography does not take recording reality as its own responsibility, the objects in its works cannot be its original intention in the objective world. Every object appears as a visual image symbol, and surrealist photographers use these symbols as words to create "image sentences", which are difficult to translate into "language sentences" and often contain a kind of emotion, a ray of poetry, some sensibility and a little politics.

Surrealism originates from Dadaism, whose motto is to change the world, eliminate wars and diseases, and make freedom, primitive love, spontaneous germination and dreams eternal. In fact, surrealism disappeared as early as 1966 with the death of Andel Braden, and then surrealism was repeatedly abused and misused, and was named as "new surrealism" and "new cubism".

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