Surreal photography represents unconscious ideas, dreams, and emotions. Learn more about how you can pursue surreal photography and capture a look into the subconscious that isn’t constrained by reason or patterns.
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The purpose of surreal photography
If we let go of the idea that photography realistically portrays reality, we begin exploring a very different psychological, philosophical, and artistic territory: surreal photography.
Surreal photography is all about creating visual imagery that challengers our ordinary perception of reality. Placing human beings and characters in dream-like sequences and performing actions and activities that are physically impossible serves to stretch our imagination, and challenges audiences to think outside-the-box.
From photographs that showcase characters sleeping mid-air to those that feature whimsical fairytale-inspired elements, these surreal photographic captures feature ordinary elements in an over-the-top and exaggerated way.
Surreal photography is pushing the boundaries of what is achievable with a photograph. The purpose of surreal photography was to destroy the borders between reality and dream and to release the passion.
These types of photos have been described in a variety of ways: unusual, unreal, idiosyncratic, illogical, irrational, weird, dream-like, hallucinatory, surprising, startling, disorienting, upsetting, disturbing, and anarchistic.
What is surrealism?
They tamper with the boundary between reality and fantasy, showing us things that are impossible in everyday life. They draw on a vivid imagination that leads to interpretations of the world extending beyond our usual perceptions of it. As suggested by the Latin root “sur,” it is a reality over, above, and more than our familiar reality.
Surrealism in the art world became popular in the early 1920s as an expression of a revolutionary philosophy. It aimed to free people from rigid rationality and restrictive habits in politics, religion, and social behavior. Surrealists, who sometimes allied themselves with radical political movements, wanted to liberate the mind by unshackling the imagination.
If we release our thoughts from civilized standards, they claimed, we arrive at truths we had never known before. Unfettered by reason, outside of conventional aesthetic and moral rules, the play of fantasy arrives at new solutions to the problems of life.
The compelling surreal image injects a shock to one’s psychic system, thereby revealing hidden emotional, psychological, and spiritual insights. This artistic style sometimes depicted the alienation people felt in the modern world, while attempting to point the way deep into the psyche to reveal one’s individuality.
In addition to drawing on ideas from Hegel and Marx, surrealism also allied itself with Freud. As a psychologist, I’d like to focus on this particular partnership. In its heyday during that period of time, psychoanalytic theory turned our attention to the mysterious world of the unconscious. Similar to analysts who used free association and dreams to explore this realm, so too artists and photographers employed them as tools for creating surrealistic images.
The History & Feature of Surreal photography
Surreali photography has its roots in the Surrealist art movement of the early 1920s in France and is famously known for its astonishing writings, surreal images and artworks.
The Surrealists set out to bridge the gap between the human unconscious, as expressed in the fantastical world of dreams, and our more mundane waking lives.
The original surrealists were mostly painters, writers and film-makers. But it is probably not coincidental that the founding father of the Surrealist movement, André Breton, had also trained in psychiatry and Freudian psychoanalysis. Indeed Freud’s ideas regarding the subconscious and dreams was a major influence upon the Surrealist art movement.
There are a wide variety of surreal images, ranging from subtle to bizarre. In some cases, it is the content of the image that pushes it into the surreal realm. In other cases, it is the visual style. Sophisticated shooting, compositional, and post-processing techniques can lead to complex surreal images by incorporating a variety of primary process qualities.
Surrealism is distinct from abstraction. Both surrealism and abstraction were a break from art that was strictly representational, but they have different approaches. Abstraction uses colors, shapes, textures, and other elements to evoke feelings or ideas. Surrealism has recognizable images, but they’re often displayed in an unusual way. Surrealism is always tied into reality in some way. Even though it’s not realistic, it needs to be believable.
The more elements of primary process present in the image, the more surreal it will be. However, in some cases a straightforward and simple approach, based on one or two elements of primary process, might best capture the primitive and intense qualities of this unconscious mode of thinking.
Some of the personality traits of creative people reflect this ability to tap primary process during a regression in service of the ego. These characteristics might be especially important among photographers and other artists who create surreal images. They have a thin boundary between different realms of experience, such as work and play, dream life and waking life, and the conscious and unconscious realms of their minds.
They are open to and enjoy new experiences, including reveries, fantasy, hypnosis, meditation, and other altered states of conscious, chemically or naturally induced. Having the ability to “let go,” they do not fear a loss of control, which frees them from conscious rational restraints in pursuit of primary process insights.
They appreciate play, exploration, mystery, ambiguity, and complexity. As independent thinkers, they do not feel the need to conform to rules, authority, or even to their own traditions. They understand the power of “un-knowing” in breaking the rigid mental sets that build obstacles to new connections and insights.
Top 7 Common Surreal Photography Techniques
- Photomontage : Photomontage is one of the common techniques used in surreal photography .
- Blurring : This method is an off the field surreal photography technique.
- Shutter speed : Shutter speeds of a camera can create excellent surreal photography.
- Float your subject : Floating your subject is an impressive way to create surreal photography.
- Solarization : Solarization is a surreal photography technique to make an image reversed in tone.
- Perspectives : Using camera perspective is a surreal photography technique to distort reality.
- Color Choice : Adding a little bit of colors to surreal photography can give it even more stunning look.
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