everyday

PROJECT 1: EVERYDAY UNCANNY

Surrealism within the everyday

My task for this project was to produce a series of photographs that interpret the everyday/uncanny through the surrealist strategy of de-familiarising the familiar. In setting out to produce my work I first identified professional works by artists such as Andre Breton, Man Ray and Raoul Ubac from which I have taken my influence. By understanding their interpretation of surrealism and researching and understanding a synopsis of a historic grounding of surrealism and to be able to disseminate the artists’ use of techniques, their system of signs that are used within the imagery of their surrealist work has enabled me to produce my own series of surreal photographs.

The images that I have created come from a cross section of genres used in surrealism. I have taken the approach of portraying various techniques and methods used in surrealist photography such as solarisation, melting negative printing, multiple exposure, photo montage and photo collage in de-familiarising the familiar in my work.

The image called Tubridyogram is my version of Man Ray’s Rayograph, the technique by which placing an object onto photographic paper and exposing it to light leaves the white outline of the object and a black background. In my version I have managed to capture a more three dimensional effect by using a modern digital approach, but yet in the levels of surrealism a contemporary audience may not be convinced by deeming the photograph as surreal.

In my work I have attempted to put a modern slant onto surrealist techniques that have been used by Ray, Breton and Ubac, to name a few. I have used a range of diverse backdrops and subjects in my work from the underground, the streets that surround us and everyday objects in order to comply with the brief of de-familiarising the familiar. How successful I have been I believe can be debated. As I have mentioned above, some may argue that Tubridyogram is not surreal by our modern standards, but if it was looked at and appreciated with the times in which Ray was working in mind then indeed it could be viewed as typically surreal.

Using digitised techniques to capture the manual techniques that were used by the artists mentioned previously has been successful and a strength in my project in that it allowed me the freedom to play around with the image until I achieved the desired effect, which in itself is an expression of surrealism. However, taking a contemporary image such as Moving On and applying Ubec’s melted negative technique creates a more convincing surreal image not because it is of the distorted face but of its distorted surroundings which in surrealism is read as a system of signs. In Tubridyogram the burnt out silhouette of a cherub signifies a different meaning in our contemporary thinking, whereas in Moving On the distorted busker’s sign signifies something unnatural and disturbing, or dreamlike as Breton would say.

To move forward in my project and to improve it I would develop each image with a lot more relevant signs within it. I would also confine myself to one or two techniques in order to develop a deeper representation of a surrealist portfolio of photographs and have a running theme throughout in order to make easier the construction of each idea and image itself. In producing the work I would also manage my time more so that each end product is what I expect it to be. A further understanding of surrealism and researching a wider range of artworks within the movement I believe would also allow me to develop and produce a more concrete project within the theme of de-familiarising the familiar.

Patrick Tubridy

PROJECT 2: MASQUERADE