Photography that crosses the limits of reality

In the essence of photography is to experiment, try, err and obtain an image left to the hand of the imagination during the moment it is shot or later, in its post-production.

Of almost all the practices that one can imagine, achieved on the back of chemistry and technology, but without having to portray reality, rather, trying to get away from it, the exhibition

at the CaixaForum in Madrid until March 26.

A tour with 172 works by 107 artists, from the Musée National d'Art Moderne-Centre d'Art Georges Pompidou, structured into six thematic sections and without chronological order.

It is essential that the visitor stop at the explanation of the cartouches to know what they are seeing, and enjoy it.

From Madrid, this exhibition will travel to the CaixaForum in Barcelona, ​​Seville and Valencia.

With an environment in some areas with dim light for the conservation of the pieces and to be able to better appreciate their optical effects, the exhibition shows pieces that go from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, with no Spanish representation, by the way.

"Experimentation is part of photography from its origins," explained the curator, Julie Jones, art historian, at the presentation.

Thus, the visitor also has the opportunity to play for a while at being a photographer on the three screens of the exhibition in which they can take a self-portrait and, based on their image, apply different tools to see themselves distorted, in negative, with scratches. …

Bruce Conner, 'Starfinger Angel (ange aux doigts en étoile)', 1975. Center Pompidou (VEGAP)

Man Ray, 'Luisa Casati', 1922. Center Pompidou (VEGAP)

Sara Cwynar, 'Girl from Contact Sheet II', 2013. Center Pompidou

Hedda Sterne, 'Composition surréaliste', Vers 1938. Center Pompidou (VEGAP)

Herbert Bayer, 'Self-portrait', 1932. Center Pompidou (VEGAP)

Gilbert & George, 'Praying Garden (Jardin de prière)', 1982. Center Pompidou

Roger Parry, 'Sans titre', c.

1930. Center Pompidou

Pol Bury, 'Chicago', 1974. Center Pompidou (VEGAP)

Jean-Paul Goude, 'Mounia in Saint Laurent', 1985. Center Pompidou

Brassai, 'Nocturne', 1972. Center Pompidou

The exhibition receives, in the section entitled

with a classic: Man Ray's x-rays, from 1922, in which this icon of surrealism interposed everyday objects, such as combs or keys, between the light of a light bulb and sensitive paper to achieve images in which the utensils seem to float in the air.

Next to him, a generational companion and concerns, the Hungarian photographer and painter László Moholy-Nagy, with his “luminous compositions”, photos taken without a camera and abstract in nature.

Professor at the Bauhaus, he left one of the most influential essays on the image:

(1925).

In this area, led by avant-garde artists who showed a special interest in the photographic medium, especially Surrealists and Dadaists, one can also see the "solarizations" by Frenchman Maurice Tabard, in which he subjected emulsified paper to intense white light for the revealed.

In his beautiful image

(1949), the trunk merges with legs.

Also noteworthy is the phantasmagoric piece

(Angel with star fingers), from 1975, by the American artist Bruce Conner.

In the

section there are proposals that affect "the relationship between photography and physics," Jones explained.

It focuses on a period up until after World War II, when science had taken a gigantic leap.

There are, for example, the shots of the traces left by the oscillation of a luminous pendulum, captured in 1952 by the Swiss designer, illustrator and photographer Gérard Ifert.

The vibrations that a person generates when walking has been dealt with by the Danish contemporary artist Olafur Eliasson in his 2004 work entitled

(Study of the vibrations of a pedestrian).

To do this, he put some LED bulbs on his body and moved through a dark room, helped by his past as a

, while a camera captured it until it resulted in luminous abstract lines.

Also interested in the displacement was the electrical engineer Harold Eugene Edgerton, who had started in photography.

A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he is famous for his poetic images of falling milk drops bursting.

chemigrams

Alterations,

the most difficult chapter of the exhibition to follow

dives into another dimension, in which photography resembles pictorial abstraction, thanks above all to the use of color: failed copies, poor prints, the "chemygrams" of the Belgian Pierre Cordier , which obtains images without cameras by applying chemical products to sensitive paper in bright light, and the series of self-portraits (between 1984 and 1987) with psychedelic and geometric motifs by conceptual photographer Ellen Carey.

'Praying Garden', 1982. Gilbert & George / CENTER POMPIDOU

The limits of experimentation are stretched, not exempt from pure play, in the section

, in which you can see the series of snapshots taken by the British artist Steven Pippin in 1997, in which he used several washing machines as cameras, and in the drawer for detergent and fabric softener he poured developer and fixer.

Pippin himself walked past the washer/camera to take a picture, even during the spin.

A fun madness, bordering on

.

More relaxing are the “luminous forms” of the Austrian scientist Herbert Franke, who with a stroboscope —a device that emits flashes to portray, as if it were stationary, an object that rotates at great speed— fixed itself on the vibrations of a white wire.

Special mention should be made of the great installation

, by the poet and artist Jeff Guess.

It is a work of one by 22 meters with 24 images.

The set is suspended from a circular metallic structure and the grace is that Guess produced the images by placing the negatives in his mouth, which literally became a camera obscura.

In each image he represented one of his hands touching an everyday object.

The

section is dedicated to trying to show how photographic experimentation can sometimes promote the questioning of reality, the critical sense.

So feel free to try the combination of several negatives in the enlarger, superimpressions of people walking,

digital transformations... The impressive photomontage titled

stands out , by the Hungarian surrealist Brassaï, who on his outings at night in Paris since the 1930s he captured the graffiti of the time that he later cut out until composing this new great image.

'Self-portrait' (1922).HERBERT BAYER / CENTER POMPIDOU / VEGAP

The end of

is for the quintessential protagonist of photography and one of the favorite motifs of the creators of experimentation, the human body.

An anatomical explosion of mouths, eyes, asses, legs... in which stands out the disturbing set design entitled

(1982), by Joel-Peter Witkin, in which she clings to a crescent moon that looks human .

Until finishing with the amusing self-portrait of the versatile Herbert Bayer, an advertising designer at the Bauhaus, who photographed himself in 1932 in a montage in which he is seen with one arm raised from which the armpit has disappeared, which appears supported by the other hand. .

Nothing here, an optical effect there.

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