Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann

Untitled, 1992

A pioneer of photo-manipulation in the darkroom, creating a magnificent collection of surreal imagery by hand. His images aren't meant for literal translation, but rather allow the viewer to transcend to a journey of the unfathomable and enjoy the surreality of the picturesque world created. Uelsmann played on big idea's, which helped his work become so vague - and this is turn led to interpretation left to subject to the viewer. 

Ueslmann's work tends to conform to black and white imagery, with massive contrast of subject within the frame. He contrasts the organic with the artificial in much of his work. 

Technique: Multiple printing of several negatives on one sheet of photographic paper. Exposing certain parts of the same negative longer, sometimes only exposing one part of a negative all together. To blend the images together well, blocking the light from below the enlarger, causing a soft edge. 

Untitled, 1993


PDN: It's been said that a lot of your photographs have psychological and/or spiritual dimensions? Is that your intention when making an image?

UELSMANN: I think my images have a lot of both. I also think that that has been a detriment to me in terms of the contemporary art scene because it's much more difficult for critics to write about work if they don't understand what's behind it. Most of my work places a great responsibility on the audience. I like that people have come to me and said, "Oh, you made a photograph that was one of my dreams." People have various interpretations of my images. One of my most popular images is of this man that is walking on a desk in a study that has a cloud ceiling. I think it's popular because it falls within what we generally call the narrative tradition. You just want to make up a story about it. I find that although I have left this image untitled, one of my gallery dealers, when he wants this picture, he always says, "I would like to get a copy of the Philosopher's Study."

Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki

The Bound Woman
56x45.7cm

A prolific Japenese photographer known for his diaristic photographing. His work documents the quotidian elements of life from love, sex, death, consumption, clouds, flowers, bars, toys, cityscapes, people. Besides these factors he is likely most known for his nudes of women, bound and tied up with ropes. 

"Women have all the charms of life itself. THey have all the essential attributes: beauty, ugliness, obscenity, purity... much more so than nature. In women, there is sea and sky. In women, there is the bud and the flower...

... I tie women's bodies up because I know their souls can't be tied. Only the physical self can be tied. Putting a rope round a woman is like putting an arm round her."

Many of his images are printed in monochrome, and black and white photos are to represent death. "To take a photo is to kill the subject.", yet he wants to resuscitate them and he does this by adding erotic feelings, passion and warmth to the body by painting over some of his photographs with paint, often reds and greens. 

Although his photography wouldn't be considered to be put under the label of surrealism, his images are gritty and some scenes are of strange situations only an imaginative mind (or the subconscious mind) could think of. 

Rune Guneriussen

Rune Guneriussen
http://www.runeguneriussen.no/

Bouncing between the boundaries of installation and photography, this Norwegian artist insightfully photographs ordinary items in extraordinary environments, juxtaposed in their nature. He takes staged photographs in his homeland countryside, throughout dense forests and empty winter landscapes. 

His installations rarely still exist, but his photographs do. 

Such items used in his photographs are:

• Phones
• Lamps (a lot of lamps)
• Chairs 
• Books

"The photograph represents the reality of the installation itself."

As an artist he strongly believes that art itself should be questionary and bewildering, as opposed to patronising and restricting. As opposed to the current fashion he does not want to dictate a way to the understanding of his art, but rather indicate a path to understanding a story. 

Manipulation, Staged and Documentary.

The difference between theme and technique. 

"In theory, making photographs is the pictorial equivalent to the surrealist process of automatism. Although, surrealist photography has not always attached itself to such a straight forward and automatic approach. It is thought that, generally, surrealist photography took several forms: photomontage and manipulation, staged photography and documentary photography." (Excerpt from my previous written essay, Photography and Surrealism).

Photomontage and manipulation:
Jerry Uelsmann
Richard Hamilton

Staged photography:
Nobuyoshi Araki
Rune Guneriussen

Documentary photography:
Andre Kertesz

Collage, frottage, grattage

Collage

A technique of art production, where the artwork is made by assembling different forms together, creating a new whole in itself. It may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, different papers, portions of other artwork paintings or photographs, found objects of anything at all should the artist choose to use it. 

The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but the technique made a huge reappearance in the early 20th century as forms of art. The term itself was born from the French world for glue, "coller", coined by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the 20th century, when collage was becoming a distinctive part of modern art of the time. 

Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knide through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919. Hannah Höch.


Photomontage

Collage made from photographs, by cutting and joining a number of other photographs (or parts of). The final piece would sometimes be photographed, so to become a seamless print once more. Another technique is "combination printing", derived from the Victorian period. This is printing more than one negative on a single piece of print paper. 

Though with technology on the rise, today's digital collaging makes the process much easier and faster with programmes such as Photoshop. 

Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956. Richard Hamilton.



Frottage

When an artist takes a pencil/drawing tool, places paper over a textured surface and rubs the drawing tool to print the texture onto the paper. Developed by Ernst in 1925.

Pete, 2004. Roger Clark Miller.



Grattage

A surrealist technique, where paint (usually dry) is scraped off the canvas. First used by Max Ernst and Joan Miro. 

The Entire City, 1934. Max Ernst. 

Free association

Originally derived from Sigmund Freud, psychoanalytic patients were invited to relate whatever came to their minds during an analytic session, not to censor their thoughts at all. 

To help explain this method Freud would often use this analogy: "Act as though, for instance, you were a traveler sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which you see outside."

"Finally, never forget that you have promised to be absolutely honest, and never leave anything out because, for some reason or other, it is unpleasant to tell it." Freud, Sigmud (1913). On the beginning of Treatment. 

Automatism

au·tom·a·tism  (ô-tm-tzm)

n.

1.

a. The state or quality of being automatic.

b. Automatic mechanical action.

2. Philosophy The theory that the body is a machine whose functions are accompanied but not controlled by consciousness.

3. Physiology

a. The involuntary functioning of an organ or other body structure that is not under conscious control, such as the beating of the heart or the dilation of the pupil of the eye.

b. The reflexive action of a body part.

4. Psychology Mechanical, seemingly aimless behavior characteristic of various mental disorders.

Max Ernst

Max Ernst 

Relying on spontaneity, juxtapositions of materials and imagery, and subjectivity - he collided two creative ideals that helped define Abstract Expressionism. And although his works are predominantly figurative, his techniques express abstractivity. 

Emerging from the Dada movement, surrealism came to surface and Ernst become one of the movement's founding members. He stumbled across the technique of frottage (rubbing), laying paper on a textured surface and rubbing a pencil across to transfer the textured effects onto paper. The emphasis of the contact between materials and transforming everyday materials to arrive at an image that symbolised somewhat of a "collective consciousness", would become central to Surrealism's ideal of automatism. - The idea that the random and free interaction between artist and material produces an image of the artist's subconscious and inner state. 

Ernst typically rejected the traditional style of painting, turning to his techniques of collage, frontage, grattage. 


"Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation."

On his collages: "I was surprised by the sudden intensification of my visionary capacities and by the hallucinatory succession of contradictory images superimposed, one upon the other, with the persistence and rapidity characteristic of amorous memories."

"The role of the painter... is to project that which sees itself in him."

Celebes, 1921
Oil paint on canvas

Ernst often reused found images, adding and/or removing elements in order to create new realities - all drawn from the known and real world we see. The central shape in this painting originates from a photograph found in a Sudanese corn-bin. Here it is transformed into some sort of a mechanical monster. The juxtapositions of such strange features around the elephant-like creature, including the headless figurine, suggest the visuals of a dream and the Freudian technique of free association. 

René Magritte

René Magritte

“We question pictures,” said Paul Nougé, “before listening to them, we question them at random. And we are astonished when the reply we had expected is not forthcoming.” (Histoire de ne pas rire. Brussels: Les Levres Nues, 1956. P. 279)

The simplicity of his work is misleading, and for this our expectations and demands for answers within “art” are not given up so easily. 

Within the art movement of surrealism, he was no conformist. He strongly opposed self-projection and self-expression. To him his work stemmed from the revelations of the mystery of the visible world. It was this world, the “real” one, that fed his fascination. He did not need to draw from dreams, hallucinations, strange phenomena. Although, preconsciousness (the state before and during waking up) did play an important role in this work.

More often than not, Magritte chose ordinary things to construct his work – trees, chairs, tables, doors, windows, shoes, landscapes, people. He wanted to be understand by these ordinary things, he did not seek to be obscure. Although on the contrary, he sought through shock and surprise to liberate our conventional vision from its own obscurity.

Le Model Rouge II, 1937

Oil on canvas, 72x53.5”

Magritte’s friend Paul Nougé noted a social criticism, the destructive influence which social conditions imposed on us have on human relationships. And Magritte wanted to make clear that these perverted relationships also concern ordinary, everyday things which we assume are “at our service”, but which actually rule us, control us every day. Thus – there is a power of shoes over men.

In the painting here, the gravel teamed with the unpainted planks and grained wood, it creates a harsh, rough sensation, alongside the colour tones.

Le Poison, 1939

Gouache, 14x16”

Magritte often played with the mystery of space and time, and its subjectivity to earthly things. He would play with the fusion of interior and exterior, the alteration of proportion. He would interfere with the system of things (as poison does) and would visit the conceptions of big and small.

The cloud comes sailing into the room, casting a shadow on the wall thus becoming an object. But the cloud also belongs outside. The door goes through a change of colour, from the natural grain of the wood from inside to the blue of the sky. The scene from outside and the room inside, these worlds merge into each other, transcending any spatial contraction and losing their individual character.

Le Château Des Pyrenees, 1959

Oil on canvas, 79x55”

Magritte was fascinated with the properties and preservation of stone in the 1950’s. He was obsessed with the weight and volume of enormous rocks,, but altered the laws of gravity and disregarded the weight of matter. The vision is a play on the French expression “châteaux en Espagne”, equivalent to “castles in the air” and completed the difficult task of making the imaginary look real.  

Surrealism and Photography

PHVP3409

Surrealism and Photography

“Some may say the photographic medium is a forever changing one. Keeping a promiscuous nature, no one has been able to settle on a status for its position in the art world. Perhaps its astute adaptability is an instrument to its survival as an art form, but a distinct characteristic of photography is its ability to employ or replicate other art forms and movements.

So how does the lens-based imagery fare within the Surrealist? At first it may seem surreal in itself that surrealism, highlighting the prominence of the unconscious, should have anything to do with the all too physical process of photography. But it can be understood that instead of running away from reality, surrealists instead pursue a more profound form and meaning of it.

Surrealism took shape in the 1920’s, developing out of the Dada activities during World War I.  The movement, including the publishing of Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto (October 15^th, 1924), proclaimed the prevalence of the subconscious thought over rational thinking. In short: to expose psychological truth by freeing thought from conscious reasoning.

It makes an arduous approach, dealing with such a free system of thinking - to reason and attempt to understand such a format that represses reason and thinking to begin with. It could be thought this itself is half the magic behind the movement. However, it is not the sole, nor primary, purpose behind the comprehensive reasoning of surrealist photography. These artists felt that the subconscious, rather than conscious, reason, should guide their work. And we look at these visual images, trying to grasp some understanding of what these, almost inexplicable, subconscious landscapes are expressing.

In theory, making photographs is the pictorial equivalent to the surrealist process of automatism. Although, surrealist photography has not always attached itself to such a straight forward and automatic approach. It is thought that, generally, surrealist photography took several forms: photomontage and manipulation, staged photography and documentary photography.”

The introduction to an essay based on Surrealism and Photography, written by myself last year. Although understanding the brash nature of surrealistic photography, sometimes perhaps perceived as “out there”, the potential and possibilities of its outcomes reach as far as the subconscious and imagination can go, quite literally.

This can be a good point to start with. And a good point to revert back to when finding yourself stuck, knowing that with surrealism there will be an answer – or a new question - as long as you have a mind to unfold.