Frederick Sommer, “Max Ernst, 1946,” gelatin silver print.
Museum Purchase, Gridley W. Tarbell II Fund. © Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation.
This website features photographs on view in the exhibition Under the Surface: Surrealist Photography, at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art from February 27 to June 1, 2014. The site includes posts written by the exhibition’s curator, Andrea Rosen, as well as responses from Bowdoin College students who studied surrealist photography in the Fall 2013 course, “Modernism/Modernity,” taught by Marilyn Reizbaum, the Harrison King McCann Professor of English. At times more than one student responded to the same photographs, providing different reactions to the same image. You can see the Archive page for a list of all posts.
To navigate to the different posts, use the sidebar on the right. You can see all the posts written by students by clicking on the “By Students” category, and all the posts written by the curator by clicking on the “By Curator” category.
The exhibition focuses on five themes: portraiture, still life, the body, the street, and dream. You can click on the categories to see posts grouped by these themes. You can also click on tags to see posts grouped by artist or technique; the larger the tag, the more posts related to that tag.
All works on this website are in the collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, unless otherwise stated.
Click here to see a video interview with Andrea Rosen, curator of Under the Surface: Surrealist Photography, produced by student assistant to the curator Kiyomi Mino ’16.