Features of Photographic Surrealism: Historical Retrospective

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of surrealist photography of the 20th – first quarter of the 21st century as part of audiovisual culture and to conceptualise the specifics of the representation of images of urban space through the prism of photographic surrealism. Research methodology. The analytical, historical-cultural, typological, comparative method, as well as the method of scientific generalisation were applied. Scientific novelty. The specifics of the manifestations of surrealism in audiovisual culture were studied using the example of photography and the techniques and methods invented by the leading representatives of surrealism of the 1920s–1930s, which are actively used at the present stage, were analysed; the issues of photographic surrealism were considered in the context of the features of the representation of architectural images of modern urban space. Conclusions. Photography disrupted the way of understanding reality and, in particular, immediately announced itself as an alternative proposal to traditional tools of representation, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Thus, not only a method of representation was born, but also a new language capable of evaluating reality differently than drawing. The emergence in 1924 of surrealism, which had a huge impact on audiovisual art in general and photography in particular, emphasised the diversity of possibilities in reading reality through the photographic tool. Developed by M. Ray, G. Bellmer, R. Malthet, A. Smith, E. Weston, E. Erwitt photography methods (double exposure, montage/photo collage, solarization/Sabatier effect, frame rotation/distortion, photographics, photoframe/radiography, burning), as well as surrealist visual art techniques extrapolated to photography (ambiguity of objects, play with changing distance, juxtaposition of unrelated objects, objects with abnormal functioning or subjects with inadequate behaviour, gigantic or tiny objects, geometric and isolated architecture) are actively used at the present stage. In the practices of 21st century photographers, the surrealist idea of revolutionary transformations in representation and images, in particular in the context of images of urban space, acquires a new sound thanks to the achievements of digital technologies.