Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas

i consider this as the movement that lead to absurdism ( the inspiration for my current project), it experimented with ideas and images that broke the norm and allowed artists to express un-conventual thoughts, values and ideas.

surrealism officially gained popularity in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton (1896–1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement.

Absurdism in itself is the pursuit of the absurd, which is an interesting concept because absurdness is regularly used word in reference to silliness, or obscurity.

Although It quickly became a form of protest it resonated as a way for women to create art that challenged the status quo and bring revolution for women across the world.

This was considered a challenge to traditional confirmative behaviour and expectations of females because of the underlying connotations in the art they produced was that it was silly or ‘absurd’. Below are some examples of this in the early feminist art movement.

This was a vital movement. It not only provoked thought and consideration among women across the world about their life styles and what was expected of them, it also inspired women to create art in a time when the art world was a primarily male dominated.

Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer, artist and sculptor. Born in 1849 to a Jewish family and died at 60 years old via execution for her protest art work in December 1954, heartbreakingly just before Jersey was freed from occupation and the war was ended.

Her art was revolutionary and convention-breaking in many ways but primarily in their work on identity and self recognition.

Claude Cahun, originally Lucy Schwob, changed there name in order to adopt the gender ambiguous name , Claude.

they did this in a battle with their attraction to women and conflictions about their identity, throughout their life they created challenging and thought provoking images that very very controversial and generally upsetting at the time.

Claude primarily took self portraits displaying the conflict of identity that they were enduring often either featuring two versions of themselves or contradicting themes (eg. typically masculine clothes or objects pared with heavy makeup and provocative shirts)

these ideas were considered outrageous at the time especially during the occupation of jersey in world war two, so outrageous their work was considered dangerous and threatening to the Nazis, this resulted in cahuns eventual arrest and execution.

Cahun was very ahead of there time and payed a very high price for it, as an artist there work is interesting and absurdist, representing the absurdness of her situation and the contradiction in their identity .

in these images i believe i achieved the effect i was after and am very happy with them.

i will use these images to create abstract editorial images, these are the raw photos i have chosen from the photoshoot the move forward with

Absurdist femininity

• when taking photos I’m looking to create an absurd sense of extreme femininity ( inspired roughly by a mix of perfume and makeup advertisement

the photos i want to create are intended to mock the sexualisation of women in these advertisements

• my first idea for this is attempting to capture the spray of a perfume, in order to accomplish this i will use a very close up perspective with a fast shutter speed and a very bright flash
• i am creating this image in order to create an editorial absurdist image usinf it to create a halo of spraying perfume bottles
• to complete this image i needed a focus of the edit, so i created a self portrait style image turning my back to the camera and holding myself around my waste to create a feel of insecurity in the overtly sexual clothes ( a very small top )

• my next idea is about the sensuality of lipstick, so first i aim to focus on getting images of the model applying it with close up shots of her lips
• my next course of action is to create an idea that represents the imagery of smudged lipstick and what that infers so i will create photos of the model intentionally smudging it down her chin- as well and after photos of it being already smudged and her tugging at her lip, this is supposed to create the feeling of small protests.

• I also want to get a few portrait photos with the idea of cutting and sticking them together to create very slightly distorted images in reference to the culture of plastic surgery and with the idea of creating slightly unsettling photos.

photography- The word Photography literally means ‘drawing with light’, which derives from the Greek photo, meaning light and graph, meaning to draw. Photography is the process of recording an image – a photograph – on light sensitive film or, in the case of digital photography, via a digital electronic or magnetic memory.

10 years earlier Joseph invented the first ever recognised camera the heliograph, the reason is is the first recognised camera is because it created the first photograph to last till today with the help of the camera obscura

A camera obscura is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. The image of lensless camera obscuras is also referred to as “pinhole image”