Surrealism
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[26Sep20] This has nothing to do with I&P which I am just starting officially but it's where I happen to be on my personal journey, developing an understanding of photo history and theory. Surrealism came up in EyV in relation to Cartier-Bresson and I failed to see the link:.
Surrealism might well have been influenced by the availability and progression of photography at the time, but I could see no elements of surreality in Cartier-Bresson's work. I have just started reading David Bate's Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent and the introduction clarifies the position. Bate suggests that photo-surrealism is largely misreported and misunderstood. It was a movement of its time and it's milieu. It was fundamentally subversive and anti Establishment; modern digital manipulation CANNOT be truly surrealist, though it might be [What he said].
George Melly, Slowing Down
I saw a parallel between that in the 30s and, in my lifetime, comedy in the 50s and 60s, growing out of WW2 wartime Britain and the (so-called) anarchic IMTA which spawned the Goons and, more importantly, Beyond the Fringe and Peter Cooke's Establishment club (which was, of course anti-Establishment), fighting the intellectual and cultural tyranny of the time (e.g. theatre censorship) . A decade later there was Python and TW3 and related development in non-subservient political interviewing which broke down the thrall of politics over the media. A thread which runs through all of this is George Melley, surrealist, (comma) singer, art critic and icon for a generation (who like that sort of thing).
To be continued
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References
Bate, D. (2003) Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent. London: Bloomsbury.
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