An aspect of surrealism is the distortion or reality and the production of images that explore visual contradictions and fantasy. Examples can be seen in the photographic work of Chema Madoz and Angus McBean. Consider a range of examples and produce your own work in response to this theme.
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Chema MadozMadoz engages ordinary objects in different ways—by manipulating, juxtaposing, and constructing—and then photographing the new entities without digital manipulation, creating visual images that are placed out of their original context and joined together to create a new reality.
Curator Pedro J Vicent Mullor recently wrote about Madoz’s work: “We look through Madoz’s photographs but suddenly, we realise some oddity within them, and we look at them again more thoughtfully... Madoz’s photographs are not made only to be seen; they are also made to be thought about, meditated on, and therefore to be, in all senses, contemplated. And that is precisely why Madoz’s images are so extraordinary; his visual paradoxes need our deduction, our meditation; they are created to be performed and concluded in our minds.” |
Angus McBeanAngus McBean (1904-90) was one of the most extraordinary British photographers of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned the start of the Second World War through the birth of the 'Swinging Sixties' to the 1980s. he became the most prominent theatre photographer of his generation and, along with Cecil Beaton, the last of the British avant-garde studio photographers. During the 1930s and 1940s. McBean developed Surrealist techniques, including the depiction of the actress Dorothy Dickson as a water lily. Yet his style kept pace with the times and by the 1950s and 1960s he was taking photographs of celebrities from Cliff Richard to Shirley Bassey. Arguably his most famous image is of the Beatles, leaning over the balcony at their recording studios, which was used on the album cover Please Please Me. His celebrated series of self-portraits, which he sent out as Christmas cards, capture his witty and eccentric personality, while his numerous photographic commissions in the 1980s - including his work with the pop group Japan - demonstrate his infinite inventiveness and creativity.
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