Mary Warner Marian states in her book photography a cultural history
‘photography was central to surrealist practice’ (Warner Marian: 2010: 253) and
was a self proclaimed movement unlike the Dada movement. The camera is used to
reproduce thoughts in the mind either self consciously or not and used to
represent the unconscious mind. Using photography to explore the mind suggests
(because photography is capturing reality) that imagination can become reality
and some photographers tried to work in the same way as the mind and work in
their own sub conscious. 'Some surrealists pointed their cameras haphazardly,
recording whatever happened to be in front of the lens' (Warner Marian: 2010:
253) However, this was not the only method used to capture surrealism. Man Ray
experimented with photograms or Rayographs as they were also known. They mainly
featured normal everyday objects that don't usually fit together or would be in
the same place for example; a gun with a pair of dice in a quite random
pattern. Although not everyone saw Man Rays work as surrealistic and Tzara said that they were just “pure Dada
creations.”
photogram from Man Rays work.
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