Archive for the ‘surrealism’ Category
Black and White and Read All Over
I’ve been reading, and writing, about characters set against backdrops of texts, and here is a wonderful visual example of that juxtaposition. Photographer Carl Van Vechten often took portraits against geometric backgrounds, which creates a complex formal composition. It seems to set human variety within a grid of some kind. Here the grid is especially [...]
In: photography, portraiture, surrealism, text · Tagged with: Carl Van Vechten, Man Ray
Sun Bathers
More from ICP this week: going to see the Atgets (below) and the surrealist visions of Paris, which were the star attractions there, I stumbled on this work by Miroslav Tichy. The Czechoslovakian Tichy, who is mostly unknown here in the U.S., has been photographing his small village for decades and produces striking, seemingly “artless” [...]
In: contemporary, photography, surrealism · Tagged with: International Center for Photography, Miroslav Tichy
Light + Paper
I’ve been wanting to post an abstract photograph for awhile, but haven’t found one that inspired me. This one, by Laslo Moholy-Nagy, is actually a photogram (1926). Moholy-Nagy placed his hand and the paintbrush on light-sensitive paper and exposed it directly in the sun, without a camera or negative. This image is unique in several [...]
In: abstraction, photography, surrealism · Tagged with: Laslo Moholy-Nagy
Three Mouseketeers
Musicians Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse have collaborated with filmmaker David Lynch on an creative package called “Dark Night of the Soul.” I call it a package because it combines music with a book of Lynch’s photographs, but there is no album in the usual sense. The package ships with a blank CD on which you [...]
In: contemporary, music, photography, surrealism · Tagged with: Danger Mouse, David Lynch, Sparklehorse