Surrealism In Photography

Surrealism is an avant-garde movement started in the 1900s which explores the creative potential of the unconscious mind by going beyond realism in art.

- Souradeep Roy

Surrealism is an avant-garde movement started in the 1900s which explores the creative potential of the unconscious mind by going beyond realism in art. It was started with painting and then trickled to photography. Surrealism was officially launched as a movement with the publication of poet André Breton’s first Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. Surrealism movement started with the thought that rational thinking was coming in the way of imagination. Before this, documentary and journalistic photography was more prevalent where what you saw was what you got. Surrealism developed a school of thought where shapes and forms took imagination and unconstrained dreams, and fused them with reality to create beautiful works of art. Surrealism had played a major role in the First World War when several manifestos used surrealistic imageries to capture a person’s attention.

Let’s elaborate on this so that it is easier for amateurs to understand the subject. Let’s say a person has a camera and wishes to use it to express his or her thoughts. Now we all know that a camera captures reality. What if the person wishes to capture his or her dreams, imaginations and aspirations through the camera? Reality, logic and reason come in the way of expression and we never end up thinking about it. These things bind us to our real world and seldom let us expand our imagination. Surrealism is a way to overcome that. It is a ‘worm hole’ so to speak, to take a peek into other universes, away from reality and into imagination.