For this project based on the theme “UNION” I have decided to focus on the concept of merging colours in sunsets. The beauty of sunsets all comes from the blending and merging of vibrant hues as the day turns into night creating a powerful scene within the skies representing connection and harmony of all the colours coming together to create such a beautiful sight.

When creating this moodboard I wanted to visually represent how the colours of the sunsets can capture the essence of how different elements such as people, colour and lighting can come together to form something greater than the sum of their individual aspects. This moodboard serves as a key tool in shaping this vision, offering a glimpse into the aesthetic and emotional tone I am aiming to achieve with this project. It allows me to narrow down the vast possibilities of this theme and bring it down to sections to express these moments of unity and transformation through photography.

Here is a mood board representing one of the three parts of unity I am going to use within this project to capture the theme of “UNION”.

To capture the theme of “UNION”, I plan to use the relationship between people (families, relationships, siblings etc) and animals (owners and their pets, animal families) as silhouettes against the sunset to emphasize their deep connection. As the vibrant colours of the sunset merge and shift from fiery, bright oranges to calming pinks & purples, they will serve as a visual metaphor for the bond shared between humans, animals and both together.

The soft hues will represent the harmony between these relationships, for example with an owner and their dog, illustrating how both are part of the same world and experience life together. The silhouettes of either humans and animals or both together, framed by the sunset will create a powerful image of unity, showing that connections are among all living things. whether its the relationship between an owner and their pet or humans together as a family, the blending of colours will symbolize how we are all intertwined in the larger tapestry of life, moving through the world together all under the same sky.

Here is a mood board representing the second feature of unity that I am going to use within this project to capture the theme of “UNION.”

an ‘Ism’ is a a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement.

Realism

Realism is a type of approach that captures the world as it is, without, manipulation or exaggeration. It represents things in a straightforward and honest way that is focusing on the truth and realness. This style shows the ordinary and everyday aspects of life and presents images that reflect the reality of human experiences, environments, and emotions.

Characteristics of Realism in Photography:

focus on capturing subjects in their natural state, without changing anything. This means photographing people, objects or environments as they appear in real life.

subjects from daily life: street photography, everyday work, highlighting moments and details that might go unnoticed.

Social and political commentary. Documenting and photographing real life, draws attention to societal issues, inequalities, or struggles that people face.

realism avoids setting up, retouching and editing, or any other methods that could romanticise the photo. It’s about showing life as it is.

Photographers Associated with Realism:

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Known for his “decisive moment,” Cartier-Bresson captured candid, unpoised moments that reflect real life and human nature, often with a focus on social context.

Conceptualism

Conceptualism is an approach that prioritises the idea or concept behind the photograph rather than the aesthetic qualities or technical aspects of the image itself. It’s about creating an image that communicates a certain message, thought or concept, often requiring the viewer to interpret a deeper meaning behind the visual of the image. This approach challenges the traditional idea that a photograph is simply a representation of reality, instead focusing on the intellectual or symbolic aspect of the image.

Characteristics of Conceptualism in Photography:

The idea or message is more important than the visual beauty or technical quality of the photo. The photographer may create images that challenge conventional beauty or have minimal editing within the image to convey the message.

Uses symbolism to convey complex ideas, abstract thoughts, or social commentary. These symbols are meant to provoke thought and interpretation beyond the image.

Many conceptual photographs are staged. The photographer often arranges the scene or props to communicate the message, and the final photograph is more of a planned idea than a real, non-setup image.

Often explores personal or intellectual themes, including identity, memory, language, or politics. It can reflect the artist’s inner world or address societal issues.

These photographs encourage viewers to engage and interpret the image themselves. They may have multiple meanings depending on the viewer’s perspective and context.

Examples of using these characteristics in themes would be; Identity, social & political issues, memory, time.

Photographers associated with conceptualism:

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills: These are self-portraits where Sherman adopts various personas, examining the roles of women in cinema and the stereotypes associated with them. The photographs are not just of her but explore the concept of identity through the lens of media and cultural expectations.

Barbara Kruger’s Text-Based Photography: Kruger combines photography with bold, thought-provoking text to address issues like feminism, consumerism, and power. Her iconic style questions social norms and forces the viewer to engage with the conceptual layers behind the images.

Feminism

Feminism in photography is used to explore and challenge issues related to gender, women’s rights and the representation of women in society. Feminist photographers have used photography to question traditional narratives, challenge the objectification of women, and give visibility to female perspectives and experiences. Feminism in photography is also about exploring and deconstructing gender roles, power dynamics, and societal expectations.

Characteristics of Feminism in Photography:

The male gaze: The male gaze refers to the way women are often objectified and portrayed from a male perspective, making them passive subjects for male desire.

Feminist photographers often take control of their own images and bodies, using self-portraiture as a means of expressing their own experiences, identities, and emotions. This helps to stop traditional, often male-dominated, portrayals of women.

Investigates gender fluidity and identity. Photographers examine how societal norms influence the way we understand and perform gender, and often challenge binary conceptions of gender (e.g. male vs. female).

Critique how women have been traditionally confined to certain roles – e.g. motherhood, or beauty standards, and challenge these stereotypes.

Feminist photography has been a tool for social and political activism. Feminist photographers highlight gender-based inequalities, violence against women, and the intersectionality of race, class, and gender.

Challenge traditional beauty standards, promoting body positivity and acceptance of different women’s bodies, including those that don’t fit conventional standards of beauty.

Feminist Photographers:

Cindy Sherman: Known for her self-portraiture, Sherman uses photography to explore themes of identity, gender, and the roles women play in society. Her Untitled Film Stills series deconstructs the stereotypical roles of women in Hollywood films, questioning how these roles shape the way women are viewed.

Shadi Ghadirian: Her photographs, such as those in the Like Every Day and Qajar series, use visual metaphors and symbols to address gender roles, tradition, and modernity of Iranian culture.

Barbara Kruger: Known for combining text and image, her work critiques consumerism, media, and the objectification of women. Through her use of bold text and iconic images, she challenges societal norms and makes statements about power, gender, and identity.

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Social realism

What is social realism?

Social realism, which is a term used to show realist artwork, which usually there is explicit reference to, or critiques of, prevailing social conditions.

A specific social realist movements include the Kitchen Sink School in Britain. Kitchen sink artists painted drab, cluttered works of British life during the period of austerity following World War Two.

History

Social Realism, which flourished with the popularization of the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s, found its roots in American realism. As an art movement in the American artistic scene, social realism has a deep-seated relation to American scene painting and Regionalism as inspired by New Deal art for the art movement.

Mexico’s painter Frida Kahlo belongs into the movement of social realism. The Mexican muralist movement held its spark in the 1920s and 1930s and then inspired artists across the border. This constitutes one of the important forces in the social realism movement. It is marked by its political sails, most of which are truly Marxist, and narrates the social and political state of Mexico in the post-revolutionary environment.

How is social realism applied within photoraphy?

The world of photographic social realism is predicated on the imagery of daily life, on experiences of common people, and on the struggles against social and economic issues. These photographers work within the Social Realism genre to highlight the hard facts of life in marginalized communities, documenting the conditions of their lives in the hopes of awakening thought and engendering social change. This approach is characterized through a documentary style that often involves spontaneous moments and presses home authenticity and raw emotion with references to poverty, labor, and inequality. Social realism thus becomes a powerful critique and commentary on social norms and injustices, using stark images and approachable subjects as its means.

Photographer related to social realism

Dorothea Lange: Best known for her work during the Great Depression, particularly her iconic “Migrant Mother” photograph, Lange captured the hardships faced by impoverished families.

Lewis Hine: A pioneer of social documentary photography, Hine focused on child labor and the struggles of workers in the early 20th century, using photography to advocate for social reform.

Walker Evans: Known for his work during the Great Depression, particularly in collaboration with Lange, Evans documented the lives of sharecroppers in the American South through evocative imagery.

Symbolism

What is symbolism?

Symbolism is a literary and artistic device in which objects, characters, figures, or colors represent abstract ideas or concepts beyond their literal meaning. Through symbols, creators can express deeper meanings, evoke feelings, and embellish the themes of their works. A dove, for example, embodies peace, while a red rose usually stands for love. The symbolism enriches the interpretations and encourages the viewer or reader to look at it in a more profound way, contemplating how the symbols relate to the concepts they represent.

History

The advent of Symbolism as a literary movement traces back to France in the 1880s when Europe was going through turmoil and change. It was in 1886 the term came into circulation when the poet Jean Moréas published his ‘Symbolist Manifesto’ in the pages of the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro.The advent of Symbolism as a literary movement traces back to France in the 1880s when Europe was going through turmoil and change.

Even the greatest changes in creating havoc in Europe in the part of the 1800s were symbolized as the first literary movement beginning in France through the 1880s. This is evidenced wherein the term first came into circulation in 1886 when poet Jean Moréas published his ‘Symbolist Manifesto’ in the pages of the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro.

How is symbolism applied within photography?

Symbolism in photography means interpreting visual aspects to go beyond the ordinary subject and illicit emotions. To put across certain ewer abstract notions and themes, photographers may incorporate particular objects, colors, or settings in their photographs. For example, a photograph of a wilting flower would symbolize decay or loss, while a single figure in the foreground of a vast landscape could symbolize isolation or the human condition. Light and shadow, along with the selection of different settings, can also magnify the symbolic elements, creating moods corresponding to the message intended. By thoroughly selecting these aspects, photographers can induce viewers to engage at a personal level so that the experience may elicit reflections and emotions of a kind that go beyond the surface image. By virtue of this, symbolism adds depth to photography and, in turn, allows a fuller comprehension of the subject matter by the viewer.

Photographers related to symbolism

Andreas Gursky: Known for his large-format photographs, Gursky often captures landscapes and urban scenes that symbolize global themes such as consumerism and the vastness of modern life. His work plays with scale and detail, prompting viewers to consider the relationship between humanity and the environment.

Francesca Woodman: Woodman’s haunting black-and-white images often feature herself or female figures in surreal and dream-like settings. Through the use of motion, shadows, and ethereal environments, her work explores themes of identity, femininity, and mortality, laden with symbolism about the human experience.

Diane Arbus: Although her style is documentary, Arbus’s portraits of marginalized individuals and subcultures often carry symbolic weight. Through her subjects, she challenges societal norms and invites viewers to confront themes of identity, isolation, and the complexity of human existence.

Gregory Crewdson: Known for his elaborately staged scenes that often resemble movie stills, Crewdson’s photographs are rich in symbolism and psychological depth. His work typically explores themes of suburban life, alienation, and the uncanny, using symbolism to create narratives that provoke thought and invite interpretation.

Emotionalism

What is emotinalism?

Emotionally-based settings favor the projection of emotions and feelings over settled realism or skillful craftsmanship. In fine art, literature, and music, it expresses deep emotional experiences and subjective impressions and in so doing often aims to evoke an intense reaction from the viewer. This implies that emotionalism subordinates the choice of colors, shapes, and forms (or narrative in literature) to inner states and states of mood, establishing a powerful connection between the artist and the viewer. As emotionalism programs the work to transcend observation and invite the audience to engage in the shared emotional experience in their own way, it becomes a means for artists to address universal themes like love, loss, joy, and despair.

History

The expression of deep emotions and feelings beyond reasoning is the gist of emotionalism, which, as a philosophical and artistic movement, came into recognition after Romanticism, very much in the 19th century. Romanticism stressed individual expression, imagination, and passion concerning nature, thus paving the way for emotionalism. The emotionalism movement widely accepted the ideas of personal and the subrational. In the subjacent second half of the 20th century, this emotionalism found itself well entwined in the visual arts with Abstract Expressionism, where Jackson Pollock expressed raw emotionalism energetically through dynamic brushwork full of spontaneity. Today emotionalism continues to impact our culture by embedding values of honesty and emotional depth into art and personal expression.

How is emotionalism applied within photography?

Emotionalism is incorporated in photography through the capture of photographs that intimated strong feelings or moods; emotion supersedes objective representation or, more simply emotionalism. It is achieved when there is careful use of all the elements through which raw emotions are expressed – composition, lighting, colour, and subject. Photographers try to conjure that response in the viewer, even without the use of languages or conventional codes, simply looking for that immediate and visceral response. One example would happen in a portrait that focuses mainly on the facial expression without the bodily movements or in downward angles and up angles so that the subject will be presented on a less-than-ideal location at the last or when it appears dramatic, like desolation, happiness, or sadness. Despite all this, emotionalism in photography gives more importance to the image being stronger than the sum of its parts and much more than its colours and visual details becoming a channel of deeper communication with the observer.

Photographer related to emotionalism

Robert Mapplethorpe – His intimate and provocative portraits, especially those of the LGBTQ+ community, often explore themes of identity, desire, and human vulnerability, provoking strong emotional responses.

Nan Goldin – Famous for her raw, intimate photographs of her friends and personal life, Goldin’s work, particularly her series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, is deeply emotional, addressing themes like love, loss, and pain.

Sebastião Salgado – His black-and-white documentary work often highlights human suffering, resilience, and dignity, especially in areas affected by poverty, war, and environmental disasters, evoking strong emotional responses to social issues.

Well know for his work alongside Monty python, he illustrated magical pieces that defined a lot of the franchise. By incorporating photo montage into his animations he created something truly worth of playing along side the sketches the group created. These animations have created some marvellous and ludicrous stills that make you wonder what else he has instore.

Terry was a member of Monty Pythons flying circus right off the back, he frequently play characters which no on else wanted to play, such as the knight in armour that hit other characters with a plucked chicken. But most importantly, he created the animations that liked the sketches together, he even designed the series posters and movie posters and album covers.

The above photo is the “foot” famously known for stomping down twice in the opening sequence of Monty pythons Flying circus. In July 2014 it sold at auction for £16800, the piece was only estimated around £400 to £600.

This photo is quite colourful, lots of reds, oranges and yellows, which form an eye catching image that doesn’t overpower the senses and isolates the subject from the background. By using a mix of photos and his own art, Gilliam’s has taken the idea of photomontage and created something unforgettable. The deep shadows on the ankle moves to accentuate the figures appearing out of the top. The dark colour of the policeman’s uniform makes the other creatures stand out.

“Strange shapes, floating body parts and bizarre landscapes: the Surrealists sought to challenge notions of normality through the power of photography.“

Surrealism began in the wake of the First World War, when the horror and violence experienced by so many had shifted perceptions of sanity and reality. The movement was immortalised by the French writer André Breton, who published the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. This rejected rational ways of seeing the world, looking instead to dreams and the imagination for inspiration. Breton believed that creativity had been weighed down by the drudgery of the day-to-day and sought to release the subconscious power of the dream-like state. Surrealism embraced the absurd, the unconventional, and the shocking.

Surrealist principles presented an exciting challenge for photographers – while a painter can pluck from their imagination with brush and paint, a photograph is derived from the real, material world. Using a variety of processes and techniques such as photomontage (combining diverse photographic images to produce a new work), solarisation (exposing a partially developed photograph to light), and photograms (a cameraless photographic technique), photography soon emerged as a powerful medium for demonstrating Surrealist ideology.

Photographs of a photo-collage taken from the book Aveux non Avenus, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, taken from a collage made 1930, printed 2004. Museum nos. E.714-2005, E.716-2005. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Surrealism was officially launched as a movement with the publication of poet André Breton’s first Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. The Surrealists did not rely on reasoned analysis or sober calculation; on the contrary, they saw the forces of reason blocking the access routes to the imagination. Their efforts to tap the creative powers of the unconscious set Breton and his companions on a path that carried them through the territory of dreams, intoxication, chance, sexual ecstasy, and madness. The images obtained by such means, whether visual or literary, were prized precisely to the degree that they captured these moments of psychic intensity in provocative forms of unrestrained, convulsive beauty.

surrealism is meant to show a reality that doesn’t exist, surrealism can be categorised  characterized by three main themes: dreams, the unconscious, and the irrational. Surrealism is something that cant be reached, it’s not real, its an idea of something. For example loads of photographers will put multiple things together to show how surreal things really are, it shows a fake reality.  They tend to put unrelated objects and events combined in a matter-of-fact way, often in a strange, confusing space. It is stated to make something look surreal, it’s best to add something uncanny to your photographs for example this would be something seeming to have a supernatural character or origin : eerie, mysterious, its something unusual and different to everyday reality. Most of the time when u rely on something uncanny, it suggests you mean that it is strange and difficult to explain, it’s a feeling of being stuck and almost traumatised by what you are seeing. Its a strange and anxious feeling sometimes created by familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts. It shows something that your not used to.

The way to identify surrealism in photography would most likely be how the photograph is presented, and what it is symbolising. Most photographs taken to represent surrealism show double exposure, a combination of printing, montage and a solarisation plus a dramatically evoked union of dreams and reality, what is real and not. Photographers also add rotation, distortion or render their images to become uncanny. There is also a juxtaposition which can be showed by the positioning two or more things placed side by side or close together. This helps to make the ordinary into the extraordinary.

In photography, solarization is the effect of tone reversal observed in cases of extreme overexposure of the photographic film in the camera. Most likely, the effect was first observed in scenery photographs including the sun. The sun, instead of being the whitest spot in the image, turned black or grey.

Looking at some photographs related to surrealism, most photos have some of eye looking at the audience. Artists and photographers feel the need to paint or edit eyes into their work to help create a sense of mystery, depth, and psychological exploration. Eyes are meant to make you feel uneasy and unsettle, the feeling that someone is watching you, a mysterious person you don’t personally know. Looking at this concept I came across “In Magritte’s painting, The False Mirror, a huge human eye completely covers the canvas.”

This was produced by the artist René Magritte, known for creating oil painting, the main purpose of the image is to jolt the viewers by removing the eye from its usual context, presenting it without the face to which it belongs to.  It further disrupts expectation by placing a circular sky inside the otherwise ordinary oculus. Sometimes called “magical realism,” such juxtaposition of normally unrelated objects within a seemingly incongruous context is characteristic of much of Magritte’s oeuvre. Magritte stated that adding these unusual concepts helped to identify the unconscious mind. Many other artists after found that using the eye could be effective as a motif in their art. In their works, as in Magritte’s, eyes undermine our basic assumptions—they are recontextualized, multiplied, and assaulted; on occasion, they cry glass tears. The Surrealists meant these kinds of images to make viewers uneasy, to unsettle complacent attitudes about art and life.

The word surrealism was first coined in March 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire. He wrote in a letter to  Paul Dermee : “All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used”

By October 1924, two rival Surrealist groups had formed to publish a  Surrealist Manifesto. Each claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Apollinaire. As they developed their philosophy, they believed that Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination.

To me surrealism is the idea that fake things and real things are put together. Certain things wont happen in real life and surrealism helps to create a wider imagination. surrealism represents things that are uncanny and unnatural. It shows a whole different representation of the world. The reality of the world shows very strict rules that people need to follow, and surrealism tries to turn things around, make things unpredictable. Everyone has a different opinion on surrealism due to the idea that everyone is different, each person has a different mind set and focus on different things, we all have different dreams that we want to achieve. Each person is unique due to their upbringing. This ties in with the word sonder which is the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Each person has different problems and surrealism can be a way of showing it. Although I have looked at eyes before and the eye represent a mysterious person looking at you, it could also represent someone’s anxiety that they are struggling from, they feel watched by everyone and anyone and it’s a constant fear that it shuts them of reality, and surrealism helps to represent that each person has different fears and ideas and each should be accepted to an extent. surrealism is a way of expressing thoughts and feelings, especially to those who don’t feel comfortable expressing out loud. It aims to revolutionise human experiences.  It balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s artists find magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.

Websites used in my work:

Victoria and Albert Museum. (2019). Surrealist photography · V&A. [online] Available at: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/surrealist-photography?srsltid=AfmBOor3anT3QskTD-yjH6YLfI_CLrWMamtD7ZJujaZlYkt4SgdrTdEj [Accessed 12 Feb. 2025].

Department of Photographs (2004). Photography and Surrealism – The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [online] Metmuseum.org. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/photography-and-surrealism.

Annenberg Learner. (n.d.). Art: The False Mirror. [online] Available at: https://www.learner.org/series/art-through-time-a-global-view/dreams-and-visions/the-false-mirror/.

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). André Breton. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Breton

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Surrealism. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

The meaning of unity can have many universal meanings, can be interpreted and identified in various ways, however, the dictionary definition says :

• ” the state of being united or joined as a whole “

For my final exam, I want to interpret unity in my own individual way in the form of ‘Ying and Yang’. The belief that the universe is balanced through equal good and bad, love and hate is a very important mindset to me, the idea that there has to be one to have the other almost gives undisclosed closure in the sense of day to day life. I want to incorporate relationships, friendships and community into my photoshoots to give a sense of relation to my project.

Mood board –

My mood board depicts how I want to express the idea of unity. Through love and relationships and friendship and inclusivity, with the feeling of being interlinked with someone, not just intimately but platonically through the people you choose to surround yourself with.

I want to include the Ying and Yang concept through using black and white colouring on top of originally coloured photographs to embody the dark of Yang and the light of Ying.

My photographs will be majority mirror photography with some inclusion of window photography to give my ideas depth and understanding of different perspectives since I’ve chosen to elevate the idea of diversity not only in societies but also in intellect. With the use of portraiture and romanticism, my project will not just reflect myself and my thoughts but encourage others to allow themselves to engage with there own perspectives as well.

Mind map –

My mind map depicts all 4 topics I want to bounce from throughout my UNITY project. The comfort and support from community’s, cultures, friendships and relationships are so important to everyone, and the impact that that will have on my work and project overall will be effective in so many ways. Not just capturing the audience but also allowing them not not only interpret my work in their own ways but relate to it as well.

For my project, I want to present the themes of ‘union’ through surrealism. I will be doing this by showing the union between the conscious and unconscious mind through photography. I hope that I can create images that are difficult to tell if its real or edited by using long exposure, montaging different images together or staging images in an unorderly fashion. I’ve also been very interested in liminal spaces (a space between reality and the dream), and have a few ideas of how I can capture this space.

I chose to analyse Ray Man as one of my artists. Firstly he works closely with the ideas of surrealism, which links with the idea of union (as explained in my isms blog post). Its all about placing the unconscious into he conscious, which is similar to my plan for this project. He also has a very large range of work to get inspiration from, giving me more options in how I will present this project at the end. For example, his images with juxtaposition create a conflict in the mind on what’s reality and what’s imaginary.

I also chose to analyse Alexander Mourant, as I will be taking inspiration from a few of his projects like Aomori and The Lightness, using colour to help make my images both dream like and fixed in reality at the same time. I will be replicating his process of making images to improve my own.

First photoshoot plan

I’ve already taken a few photos when I went to France during half term and I will likely end up using them towards the end of my project. However, for my first photoshoot I will be replicating some of Mourant’s Images, but using editing software to create the colour I want instead of a filter.

Romanticism

Romanticism is a concept that draws from the Romantic movement in art and literature, which emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This art movement emphasises emotion, individualism, the sublime, and nature. It typically focuses on themes of mystery, beauty and the idealised. One of the key concepts of romanticism is emotion and imagination. Romantic photographs tend to capture moments which evoke strong feelings in the viewer eg fear, nostalgia and awe. Photographers achieve this through the use of dramatic lighting. Additionally, many Romantic photographers focus on the beauty of nature and its power. They often present these scenes in a dreamlike manner by using soft focus, unique lighting and unusual compositions, all of which makes a once ordinary scene look extraordinary. Overall, Romanticism focuses less on technical precision and more about capturing the emotional, imaginative, and mystical aspects of the world, inviting the viewer to connect with the deeper, unexplored dimensions of life and nature. One photographer who links to the art movement of Romanticism is Ansel Adam’s. His images often idealise nature and shows it in its untouched, majestic form, creating a sense of overwhelming awe in his viewers (which is a key concept of romanticism).

Constructivism 

Constructivism is an art movement that emerged in Russia around 1915. It was a revolutionary movement that sought to break away from traditional art forms and create new visual languages suited to the modern, industrial world. The movement is closely linked to the ideals of the Russian Revolution and the desire to integrate art with social and political change. Constructivism rejected traditional representational art in favour of abstraction. Artists used geometric shapes (eg squares, triangles, and circles) and emphasised clean lines, angles, and the use of industrial materials eg metal, glass, and wood. Constructivists believed art should serve people and contribute to social progress. Constructivism is a radical, forward thinking movement that views art as a tool for social change and aims to break down the boundaries between art and everyday life. Its focus on abstraction, geometric forms and the use of modern materials influenced not only visual arts but also design, architecture, and graphic arts. An example of a constructivist artist is Vladimir Tatlin. He was a Russian painter and architect who was best known for his contributions to the Constructivist movement. He’s most well known for his design of the Tatlin’s Tower (which was intended as a symbol of Soviet modernity and revolution). Tatlin’s work focused on the idea that art should be integrated into life and serve a practical, social function, aligning with the Constructivist belief in combining art with technology and industry. His work rejected traditional artistic methods and favoured abstraction and constructivist forms.

Impressionism 

The Impressionist art movement  originated in painting in the late 19th century. In photography, it focuses on capturing the essence/mood of a scene rather than precise details or sharp focus. The goal is to convey the impression of a moment, often using techniques like soft focus, motion blur, unusual lighting, and experimenting with colour and composition. This approach emphasises the beauty of everyday scenes which can be achieved by manipulating the exposure, shutter speed or using filters in images to create a dreamlike effect. This then evokes a feeling/ atmosphere rather than a realistic representation of the subject. Some of Claude Cahun’s work can link to this art movement due to the techniques she used. For example, her use of soft focus, blurred movements, and dreamlike compositions gives her images an ethereal and atmospheric quality, capturing not just the subject but mood and emotion too. Additionally, Michael Kenna is another impressionist artist whose black and white landscape photography often reflects a minimalist and atmospheric quality reminiscent of Impressionist art. His use of long exposure times and soft, ethereal light in his images creates a sense of movement and atmosphere. His work often evokes a dreamlike feeling which aligns with the Impressionist art movement.

Surrealism 

The Surrealism art movement began in the early 1920s. It looked at exploring and expressing the unconscious mind, dreams and the irrational through bizarre/fantastical imagery. Surrealist artists sought to challenge conventional perceptions of reality by depicting strange, illogical scenes that often combined elements of the familiar and the bizarre. The movement was heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and the ideas of Sigmund Freud emphasised the importance of dreams and the unconscious to explain behaviour. Surrealism had a profound impact on literature, film, theatre and philosophy (as well as visual arts). Surrealist photographers employ various techniques in order to manipulate reality. This consists of: double exposure, photomontage, manipulating perspective, symbolism and abstract forms. One surrealist photographer is Man Ray. His work blurs the line between the real and the imagined, creating dreamlike and fantastical images representative of Surrealism. For example, his work “Le Violon d’Ingres” (1924) features a female figure with the f-holes of a violin painted on her back, clearly displays the surrealist ideas of distortion, symbolism and the subconscious.