Painlevé, a scientist and filmmaker, recorded seahorses in natural and artificial environments using newly invented underwater equipment. His observations capture the peculiarities of the animal’s anatomy and reproductive process. The female seahorse gives her eggs to the male, who fertilizes them and carries them in his womb before giving birth. Painlevé’s sustained attention to seemingly strange, nonhuman ways of existing doubled as a critical reflection on contemporary social structures, which appealed to the Surrealist’s political orientation. In 1929 and 1930, zoological photographs by Painlevé and his collaborator Eli Lotar were published in the Surrealist journal Documents.
517: A Surreal Lens, 2025
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A Surreal Lens
Gallery 517In 1924, André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism, which, guided by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, declared a radical break from the rationalism of modern society in favor of imagination, erotic desire, and unconscious thought.
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