Create
Groundbreaking Surrealist photography to debut at Dali
In his snappy suit of bright green with purple and pink highlights, and his python-skin boots, David Raymond is the most colorful thing in the room. The slate-grey gallery walls are lined with framed black-and-white photographs, many of them a hundred years old. Or more.
But there’s vibrant life in this exhibit, The Subversive Eye, which the Dali Museum will open to the public Saturday. Subtitled Surrealist and Experimental Photography from the David Raymond Collection, the works make a strong argument that Surrealism – that mad, beautiful bending and stretching of reality introduced by Salvador Dali and other early 20th century artists – was not limited to paintings or sculpture. Nor to color.
Raymond is down from his home in Asheville to oversee the opening. He is a renowned art collector, famous in certain circles, a filmmaker and a photographer.
And an expert on Surrealist photography.
David Raymond, his wife Emily and their daughter Paloma at the Dali Museum. Photo by Bill DeYoung.
Although photography had been invented by the mid 1800s, the camera did not become an artists’ tool until the 1920s and ‘30s.
“There was a time when only large-format cameras were in existence, so it made it very difficult to be spontaneous and experiment,” Raymond tells the Catalyst. “You also had longer exposures.
“Now, when you had 35 millimeter cameras come out, and a 2 and a quarter format camera, it allowed for a smaller apparatus – that was the shift.”
Certain photographers did experiment with techniques before that, he adds, “but it was just more challenging.”
The Surrealists, originally a group of poets and writers, “really wanted to push the boundaries – not just in writing, not just in performance or music. And then all of a sudden the painters started to come in, and people that used cameras, and also filmmakers. And they were all pushing the limits.”
Umbo (Otto Umbehr) (German, 1902–1980), Mannequins, 1929, Gelatin silver print, 8 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches, Collection of David Raymond, © 2024 Artists Rights Society .
The Subversive Eye includes more than 100 prints from 50 pioneering photographic artists, including Eileen Agar, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Osamu Shiihara and Man Ray.
Surrealism is about challenging both perception and the norm, and the artists represented in the exhibition did this through multiple exposure, solarization, unique perspectives, unconventional framing and other techniques.
“What drew me to this type of material,” says Raymond, “was ‘How do we see the world’ And is the world really what we’re seeing?’ I want to be challenged. I don’t want to see the everyday. I want to see what’s going to force me to really question what is real.
“How many times a day do people use the world ‘surreal’? But do they really know where it came from?”
The Subversive Eye: Surrealist and Experimental Photography from the David Raymond Collection will run through May 4, 2025 in the Hough Family Wing Special Exhibition Gallery. For information and tickets, visit the Dali Museum website.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908–2004), Valencia, Spain, 1933, Printed c. 1940s, Gelatin silver print, 7 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches, Collection of David Raymond, © 2024 Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.
