The Uncanny and the Surreal in Urban Photography

September 16, 2012 by jackr541986

Bohn (1977, p. 206) argues, it is not by chance that we find in surrealist art a particular
interest in, metaphors which permit the extension of ourselves into another world.
The images of a window, door or lens providing access to a new world also gives us the
key to understanding Bretons surrealism as precisely the breakdown of the
conventional associations of conscious thought which affords access to the Marvelous
and the new. Insofar as urban photography adopts and extends the surrealist visual
practices, we can consider its particular aesthetic to be intelligible through recourse to
the theories and concepts offered by surrealism. Prevalent trends in contemporary
urban photography (but which can be also traced back to the early pioneers such as
Brassa) reflect the artists concern with the strangeness, the chance encounter, even the
obscene, as woven into the fabric of the city. The distillation of these features not only
brings out the disturbing quality in a mundane object, but also shatters the city as the
neutral background of the subjects daily life.
Its worthwhile pausing for a moment to explore the relationship between surrealism
and psychoanalysis which is evident in Bretons use of the term unconscious. While it
is clear that these two movements followed different tangents in many respects the
relationship between them can be understood through reference to the concept of the
unconscious as well as that of the uncanny. In his essay, The Uncanny, Freud (1919,
p. 2) defines the concept as, that class of the terrifying which leads back to something
long known to us, once very familiar. Further on, this definition is extended through
Freuds reference to Shellings definition of the uncanny, as something which ought to
have been kept concealed but which has nevertheless come to light (1919, p. 13). The
surrealist effort to discern the dimension of the Marvelous in the ordinary objects of
everyday life is clearly based on this twofold concept of the uncanny. The uncanny is,
then, an aspect whose concealment allows ordinary life to continue undisturbed, and
whose revelation can represent a shock or rupture, and yet it is also co-substantial with
the subjects perception of an object or participation in an event. The unconscious is
crucial here, distorting the known object, rendering it in such a way that it stirs up the
experience of terror in the subject. Such a terrifying experience should be understood
in its broadest sense, encompassing feelings of awe, arousal, confusion, perhaps even
disgust. Following Stamelman (2006, p. 73), we can say that reality, has its own
unconscious, an as-yet unrevealed underside. The surrealist project can thus be
understood as one of attempting to liberate the unconscious from the fetters of
convention in order to explore reality in its hidden, uncanny dimension.
In City Gorged with Dreams: Surrealism and Documentary Photography in the Interwar
Years, Ian Walker (2002) draws attention to a particular feature of Bretons own
photography which can be said to centre on a key motif of later street photography.
Walker (2002, p. 55), discussing Bretons Nadja, states: Produced in quite different
ways, the postcard and the snapshot have in common the quality of a talisman. Even
when they are pictorially of little interest, they can carry great personal resonance,
replete with memories, associations and desires. The simple image of an everyday
object or place, viewed through the surrealist lens, is elevated precisely insofar as it
initially appears as commonplace. It is this elevation of the everyday which Walter
Benjamin (1978, p. 183) wishes to convey when he notes the strange intervention of
photography as the injection of a pristine intensity. Deprived of all contextual and
narrative support, the object is able to reach beyond its natural parameters and evoke
an unexpected response in the viewer. Thus for Breton, it is the objects aesthetic
inadequacy which paradoxically allows the viewer to perceive its beauty. Insofar as the
operation involves extracting the photographed object from its contextual
embeddedness and depriving it of narrative support, we can conceive this kind of street
photography in terms of rupture. The object which once constituted part of the neutral
backdrop to our lives is suddenly torn out of place and revealed as pregnant with
meaning.
A further way in which it is possible to detect a surrealist inheritance in the works of
street photographers can be noted by observing the ways in which a particular
composition of a scene can suggest unexpected qualities. Here it is useful to turn to the
work of Brassa whose images of Paris often encourage ghostly, even Gothic
associations.[1] A key example of the surrealist import can be found in the photograph
Open Gutter (see fig 1.) from Paris by Night (1933). The image of a gutter shown
weaving through the streets of Paris, shot from a particular angle, suddenly strikes the
observer as possessing an organic quality, as if the thing itself were animated and only
glimpsed by chance. Under this interpretation, the cobble stones which line the gutter
also appear to suggest the alignment of a snakes vertebrae as it slithers between the
patches of darkness. The image can be considered uncanny in the precise sense
elaborated by Freud since it reveals a disturbing, even terrifying dimension in a well-
known object. Likewise, this object, which contributes to the background of so many
city-dwellers urban experience, is now thrown into sharp relief. In Brassas photograph
the gutter is violently dislodged from its surroundings so that it suddenly appears to
possess an alien quality. Such a quality is a product of the observers libidinal
relationship to the object, which, during his daily activity must remain suspended in the
unconscious.

Fig. 1
To shift focus towards the surrealist inheritance in contemporary urban photography, it
is instructive to turn to the collection of photographs entitled Cardiff After Dark (2010)
by Maciej Dakowicz. These images strike us initially as journalistic pictures
documenting the drinking culture of young people in Cardiff. Nevertheless, even from
this unlikely source material, it is possible to detect the influence of the surrealist
movement. Indeed, it is possible to borrow Brassas phase (1949, p. 13) and note in
Dakowicz an attempt to seize, the reality of every day so intensely that he achieves
fantasy at one bound. As the viewer progresses through the collection, she is
confronted with a series of images which evoke the uncanny through reference to
motifs such as decapitation, contortionism and orgiastic jouissance. In one example,
multiple legs appear to emerge from a single body, whilst in another, a single leg
remains perched on a plastic bollard. One is immediately drawn towards the uncanny
quality, noted Slavoj iek, of the limb without a body. If, siding with iek (2008, p.
223), we view the obscene jouissance displayed in Dakowiczs photographs as that
which, resists symbolization and causes gaps and ruptures in the symbolic order, then
the partial object (the limb, the decapitated body, and so on) acts as a kind of stand in
for the traumatic Thing (jouissance) which can never be rendered present. In these
images of hedonistic indulgence, it is almost as if the severed limbs persist in their
pursuit of enjoyment long after the bodys chaotic disintegration. In doing so, they
render the scenes jouissance fully palpable.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter (1978) Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical
Writings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York.
Brassa (1933) Open Gutter from Paris by Night Image available
at:http://www.masters-of-photography.com/B/brassai/brassai_gutter.html. Accessed
at 17:38, 25/01/11
Brassa (1949) Camera in Paris. London: The Focal Press.
Dakowicz, Maciej (2010) Cardiff After Dark. Image available
at:http://www.maciejdakowicz.com/. Accessed at 17:05, 25/01/11.
Freud, Sigmund (1919) The Uncanny, p. 2. Online version
available:http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf. Accessed at 13:58, 25/01/11
Krauss, Rosalind (1981) The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism.October, Vol. 19
(Winter), pp. 3-34
Stamelman, Richard (2006) Photography: The Marvelous Precipitate of Desire. Yale
French Studies, No. 109, (Surrealism and Its Others), pp. 67-81
Walker, Ian (2002) City Gorged with Dreams: Surrealism and Documentary Photography
in the Interwar Years. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Bohn, Willard (1977) From Surrealism to Surrealism: Apollinaire and Breton, The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter), pp. 197-210
iek, Slavoj (2008) The Plague of Fantasies. 2
nd
ed. London: Verso

[1] Also see Ian Walkers account of Brassas relationship with surrealism in his
(2002) City Gorged with Dreams: Surrealism and Documentary Photography in the
Interwar Years (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 144-65