A2 PHOTOGRAPHY - UNIT 3: PERSONAL INVESTIGATION
A2 LEVEL PHOTOGRAPHY I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. AndrĂŠ Breton
Unit 3: The Personal Investigation Surrealism Introduction
known of the photographers who were engaged in and/or influenced by Surrealism in This unit is designed to the thirties and beyond. Other introduce A2 level photographers and artists photography students to the who used photography in key ideas of the Surrealists their practice and were and to challenge them to influenced by Surrealism create appropriate include Max Ernst, Claude photographic responses. In his essay "Surrealist Situation Cahun, Georges Hugnet, Hans Bellmer, Frederick of the Object" (1935) AndrĂŠ Sommer, Clarence John Breton remarks on the way that photography had affected Laughlin, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Brassai, Bill the development of painting Brandt, Henri Cartierand how, "unable to engage Bresson, Dora Maar, Manuel in the seemingly futile Alvarez Bravo, Mari Mahr, struggle with photography, painting was forced to retreat Francesca Woodman, Erwin and reorganize its ranks in an Murm and Duane Michals. According to Walter invulnerable position, under Benjamin, photography offers the necessity of visually to consciousness modes of expressing internal reality that would remain in perception". the unconscious without its Man Ray is perhaps the best action:
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"It is through photography that we discover the existence of this optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis".