Hallucination as a Fact
Sorry folks for keeping few of you (unfortunately and thankfully) waiting! Remember I told something about my discipline in that first post? For further excuses: had to reformat my computer the day before yesterday. Below are those images referred in the classroom. I will not comment much regarding why I cited the first couple of photographs which are definitely not surrealist ones; but I consider them to be more surreal – stuff out which nightmares are made – than the latter, properly surreal one. Before you view them, the passage which provoked it…
Photography can even surpass art in creative power. The aesthetic world of the painter is of a different kind from that of the world about him. Its boundaries enclose a substantially and essentially different microcosm. The photograph as such and the object in itself share a common being, after the fashion of a fingerprint. Wherefore, photography actually contributes something to the order of natural creation instead of providing a substitute for it. The surrealists had an inkling of this when they looked to the photographic plate to provide them with their monstrosities and for this reason: the surrealist does not consider his aesthetic purpose and the the mechanical effect of the image on our imaginations as things apart. For him, the logical distinction between what is imaginary and what is real tends to disappear. Every image is to be seen as an object and every object as an image. Hence photography ranks high in order of surrealist creativity because it produces an image that is a reality of nature, namely, an hallucination that is also a fact. The fact that surrealist painting combines tricks of visual deception with meticulous attention to detail substantiates this
– Andre Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image (translated by Hugh Gray).
Nanjing Massacre in WWII: 300,000 Chinese People Killed, 20,000 Women Raped …
Image: Kevin Carter; 1994 Sudan Famine
And a rather more cheerful and properly surreal one (thanks Anamitra!)
Salvador Dali photographed by Philip Halsman
hit the nail right on the head…reality can be more surrealistic than anything else…one might call it a conscious state of the unconscious…i find some photographs of Lee Friedlander,an urban space photographer (sadly the snaps that i’m talking about are not available on the net) or for that matter even some of one Henri Cartier-Bresson more surrealistic than that of Jerry Uelsman, a renowned surrealist photographer who used darkroom techniques to invoke surrealist impression into his work…its the “…effect of the image on our imagination…” that really matters….
Anindya Sengupta: right observations. now you people don’t expect that I will comment on everything you are saying. I’m also learning things and many a times I have nothing to add.
Dhriti
August 3, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Why did kevin carter not take the child to the camp if it was a kilometre away…was that a racist act???? possibly not… but in such a situation, when the life of a being is in sure crisis, how could one run away???
what is the line between professionalism and personal-ism? since he made a choice of not attending to the child… how was this able to shock him??? huh???
if art and realism vary so much that we attend to matters only for the artistic sense and nothing else….
i’m not talking about ethics…its pure curiosity to know the analysis of the actions of the photographer [bourgeoise, freelancer, artist] towards the child,[proletariat, malnutritioned, helpless]? on a more broader sense.. is this the perfect representation of developed to the trying-their-best-to-call-themselves-developing countries???
Anindya Sengupta: Kevin Carter committed suicide within months. Probably he thought recording the moment is more necessary at that moment. Probably your words don’t apply to the psychological situation he was in…but it surely do remain as a pertinent criticism regarding media at large.
Prithwish
August 5, 2008 at 7:21 pm
and as for the records……uelsmann was never a street photographer….. lee friedlander was one……anamitra seems to have got it wrong…..
Dhriti
August 6, 2008 at 12:35 am
Previously I commented
“I can’t support Dhriti as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Jerry Uelsmann both were influenced by Surrealism and street photography. Lee Friedlander is often claimed as surrealist.
and all of them used to share another feature, that they photographed in B/W always.
Jerry Uelsmann and Lee Friedlander were born in 1934; Bresson in 1908″.
I made a mistake. Uelsmann never tried Street photography. But no one can claim that Henry-Cartier-Bresson was not a surrealist. He was born in 1908 and socialized with the surrealists at cafe Cyrano during the later 20s. He is best known as the father of Photo journalism and Street photography but that does not imply that he was not a surrealist.
Now Dhriti, how can you compare little Jerry with legend Henri? Jerry became a recognized photographer during the later 50s. It was a different time from that of Bresson. he was influenced by Max Ernst (painter, sculptor, graphic artist, poet, dadaist, surrealist)and Man Ray (painter, filmmaker, poet,essayist, philosopher…Dadaist, Surrealist). Some works of Lee Friedlander is also claimed to have surrealist impact and influence, especially his early works. He was not only a street photographer. He took snaps even of his own room. I am not going to write on it anymore. Search the web for yourself.
When I evaluate the First two photographs (‘…which are definitely not surrealist ones..’) I don’t get them to have surrealist approach. Those are real, not surreal. Surreal means more than the real (e.g. the difference between Charge and Surcharge. do not overlook the prefix.) Well those are horrible of course, but that is more close to the Gothic art form, not exactly the Gothic, rather the Gothic-Demonic. Though I will consider them to be realistic as we all know that war and famine are the step son and daughter of capitalism; speaking of economics and politics which are real (one can say that politics is getting Surrealist day by day to make fun of it). [Well I am not very fond of posting extended comments and I am not a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist politician, so leaving the question of economic Structure here getting back to the surrealism]
Those photographs do follow the syntax of the real. Now Anindya da, you are a sensitive person and that is why you claimed those to be more surreal than the surreal one (hey, why did you omit ‘Skull’ of Philip? was it out of female nudity?). Do you know that in our Kolkata there are some people who often have to eat boiled rat at night? Go to the slum area at Nonadanga, stay for a night and let us know if it is surreal or real. You live far away from Sudan or China, if it was Kolkata you would have understood what I am trying to say.
Let me quote Blaise Pascal——”Diversity is so vast that every different tone of voice, every step, cough, every wipe of the nose, every sneeze….”
I haven’t read his works. This one was from the Surrealist Manifesto (1924) by Andre Breton. The next lines of the manifesto follows—-
If in a cluster of grapes there are no two alike, why do you want me to describe this grape by the other, by all the others, why do you want me to make a palatable grape? Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known, classifiable. The desire for analysis wins out over the sentiments.** (Barrès, Proust.) The result is statements of undue length whose persuasive power is attributable solely to their strangeness and which impress the reader only by the abstract quality of their vocabulary, which moreover is ill-defined.
Consider those photos as texts and rethink.try to link it up.
Kevin Carter committed suicide within months after capturing the child and the vulture. May be he was shocked by the situations he faced during the Sudan Famine. May be he committed suicide due to some other reasons. May be the child in the photograph was dead already. May be the dead body was placed there to take the photo. The UN food camp is only 1 km away and there is no sign of a soldier. Were they taking rest inside the camp? Don’t get emotional, be logical. Media had always set the facts as they wanted them to be. Ending with Mr. Luis Bunuel “There would have been no Gulf War if the media were not there”
P.S: thanks for providing the space……..
Anindya Sengupta: Dear Anamitra, don’t bother about longish responses. They are welcome. And I didn’t include the ‘Skull’ not because of nudity, but only to lessen the number of images in this page. We already have three large ones…it makes the page to heavy too load. And WordPress do indirectly censor blogs sometimes – if ‘mature’ content is detected – by not placing them in top blogs list etc. Anyway that’s not an issue…I think this is a better Halsman photograph than the other one.
Regarding your comment. I will provide a note later…thanks!
Anamitra
August 7, 2008 at 2:26 am
My comment on My comment (Extracted from My comment and the 1924 Manifesto):
Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known, classifiable. The desire for analysis wins out over the sentiments.** (Barrès, Proust.) The result is statements of undue length whose persuasive power is attributable solely to their strangeness and which impress the reader only by the abstract quality of their vocabulary, which moreover is ill-defined.
Thank you,
Anamitra
August 7, 2008 at 2:39 am
1
Carter wanted to help, perhaps, but there was nothing, really, that he could do… to help just that one child would be neglecting the hundreds others. Taking the picture sufficed. The world would be alerted, alarmed. He died from the rage and guilt and sorrow and his very impotence to really make a difference that ate him up from the inside like tapeworm.
2
Carter took perverse delight in taking that picture, knowing its composition was world-shaking. This would make his career. The vulture snacked, tentatively and he vacated the premises. His guilt gave him ulcers and nightmares bled into his waking hours. Suicide freed him.
3
He tripped backwards over a stone, accidentally pressing the flash button. He brushed the dust from his clothes and walked to the next town. He found the photograph and submitted it. His suicide was entirely unrelated.
Anindya Sengupta: Hey! Your name sounds so spammy!
But I am delighted discovering your blog…Welcome!
zxvasdf
September 14, 2008 at 9:35 pm