Magritte And Photography

Rene Magritte, the great Surrealist painter, begin experimenting with photography at an early age. While still a young student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, he posed in a three piece suit, standing before his easel with brush and palette in hand - already projecting the carefully constructed image of the artist he wanted to become. His finely calibrated, bourgeois persona eventually entered into his own paintings, becoming a uniform image of the dark, dark-suited man with umbrella and hat. But it was in photographs that Magritte first incarnated the figure of himself as a great painter, instantly recognizable and before long, universally celebrated.Magritte and Photography is an illuminating and enjoyable study of the ways in which the photographic medium played a constant role in Magritte's social and artistic life. Beginning with turn-of-the-century pictures of his parents and siblings, running through surrealist scenarios involving friends Louis Scutenaire and Paul Nouge, and ending with haunting portraits taken by Duane Michals, this volume explores both Magritte's life and his construction of it - though the camera lens.