Room with Eye (1930)
Maurice Tabard, French, 1897-1984
"Maurice Tabard, like other Surrealist photographers, practiced darkroom sleight of hand to produce bizarre and dreamlike effects, using photography as a means of uncovering the hidden recesses of the mind. Working as an assistant to Man Ray in Paris, Tabard began to incorporate into his own photographs his mentor's experimental techniques: multiple exposure, solarization, negative printing, and photomontage. He often combined several techniques in a single image, deliberately and elaborately manipulating his negatives to confound and disorient viewers.
. . .In the photomontage of 1930, a woman's eye peers into a small, empty room furnished only with a radiator and a door at the far end. Whether a reference to the inner life of the mind, to the soul, or even to the camera obscura — literally, a dark room fitted with a lens at one end — the image reads as a metaphor for photography itself."
— Emily Ackerman
Faking It
Manipulated Photography
Before Photoshop
by Mia Fineman
by Mia Fineman
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
2012
