The Psychic Lens: Surrealism and the camera
The Psychic Lens: Surrealism and the camera, will include vintage photographs by well-known figures such as Man Ray, Andre Kertesz, Florence Henri and Bill Brandt alongside rarely seen works by artists such as Vaclav Zykmund, Franz Roh and Roger Parry to tell the story of Surrealism through photography.
There are two broad types of surrealism – the oneiric, dream-like imagery, as shown in the work of Florence Henri. Roger Parry, Cesar Domela and later Bill Brandt and automatism, a process of making which unleashed the unconscious by creating without conscious thought, as shown in some of the works by Man Ray. The tropes and motifs of Surrealism – photomontage, solarisation, still life, nudes and the photograms – infiltrated the language of photography in the proceeding years. This is demonstrated in the fashion photographs of Horst P. Horst in the exhibition, most notably the work Hands, Hands from 1941, which is a study of five disembodied hands. The exhibition also includes photographers who documented surrealism and the figures associated with the medium, including Herbert List’s portrait of Jean Cocteau (1944), Steve Schapiro’s portrait of Rene Margritte taken at MOMA, New York in 1965.
The main focus of the exhibition is a selection of works by Man Ray, illustrating the diversity of his output relating to surrealism, from portraits of artist Max Ernst and poet, artist and model Iris Tree, to ‘Rayographs’ – his avant-garde photograms created without a camera on photosensitive paper, his innovative work Woman with Long Hair (1929) and a rare print of Untitled (Ostrich egg with stamp and sandpaper, 1941).

BILL BRANDT
Nude, East Sussex, 1959
Vintage gelatin silver print, mounted to card
27.9 x 33 cm

CESAR DOMELA
Ruths-Speicher, photomontage, 1928
Gelatin silver print, printed 1981, mounted to board
28.5 x 39 cm

FLORENCE HENRI
Portrait Composition (E), 1937
Gelatin silver print, printed 1977
29.7 x 22 cm

HORST P. HORST
Hands, Hands…, New York, 1941
Gelatin silver print, printed later
20 x 24 in.

HORST P. HORST
Costume Designs by Salvador Dali for his Ballet Bacchanale, Paris, 1939
Gelatin silver print, printed later
20 x 24 in.

ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ
Untitled (Distortion #52), 1932–1933
Gelatin silver print, printed 1950s
24 x 18 cm

FRANCOIS KOLLAR
La Rouleau, 1928
Vintage gelatin silver print, mounted on board
28.2 x 35.4 cm

HERBERT LIST
Jean Cocteau, Paris, 1944
Vintage gelatin silver print
35.5 x 48.2 cm

TINA MODOTTI
Untitled (Cactus), 1926
Vintage gelatin silver print
6.4 x 9.5 cm

ROGER PARRY
Bouteille de Rhum, 1931
Vintage gelatin silver print
23.3 x 18 cm

MAN RAY
Rayogram, 1959
Vintage rayogram
26.8 x 23.5 cm

MAN RAY
Woman smoking a cigarette, 1920
Gelatin silver print, printed 1971
36.5 x 28 cm

MAN RAY
Untitled (Ostrich Egg with stamp and sandpaper), 1941
Gelatin silver print, mounted on industrial sandpaper, printed 1960s
17.5 x 23.5 cm

FRANZ ROH
Untitled, c. 1925
Vintage gelatin silver print
22.5 x 14.5 cm

STEVE SCHAPIRO
René Magritte at MOMA, 1965
Gelatin silver print, printed later
40 x 50 cm