Translations

The marvelous images that follow were born on the shores of Lake Michigan. They are the work of J. Karl Bogartte, one of the leading members of the US Surrealist Group, founded in 1966 by the poets Penelope and Franklin Rosemont, editors of the review Arsenal (this group is presently the only really “structured” and at the same time undoubtedly the most active in the international surrealist movement). Bogartte thinks, and rightly so, that “Everything—including ourselves—is moved by the obsessively beautiful conquest of the irrational.” Of course, one needs to invent the means of getting to this irrational, a problem that each great creator solved in his or her own way, taking into account, or not, the achievements of his or her predecessors. Like Man Ray, Vane Bor, Ubac and many others, Bogartte took up automatism again: “Automatism—he says— remains one of the most necessary tools in freeing from slavery the truest products of the activity of the spirit. Art is the clue left at the scene of the crime. It is also its evidence. The crime is freedom, this radiant digression into the revelations of desire.”

Paradoxically, Bogartte uses for this liberating end one of the modern inventions that would seem a priori the least suited to do so: the photocopier, on whose plate he places “all kinds of illustrations,” or fragments of illustrations “regardless of their contents: landscapes, machines and naked women, especially naked women, with eggs and forks, tinfoil, etc. Movement is the key process, as opposed to the natural function of the photocopier of recording the absence of movement and being a simple imitator.” Hence the term of photomorphosis, which means “change or transformation of an organism by means of light.” One should mention here the “self-copies” of Theodore Brauner; and the reader (…) will probably be surprised by the fact that two creators of the same movement obtained at about the same time such different results by using the same impassible mechanism.

On the plane of the “pure fascination” that Breton talked about, the entities that give free rein to their frolics (The Strange Confrontation) are as magical, humorous and “marvelous” as the various sprites, vampires and chimeras, which appeared on the scene of pictorial automatism with Matta, Esteban Francès, or Kamrowski (who is, like Bogartte, a member of the American Surrealist Group). In some cases Bogartte cuts up again the images obtained in this way and combines collage and photomorphosis, by adding sometimes fragments of photos—images of birds or butterflies, animal species that he has an elective affinity for (The Wedding Guests Have Arrived…).

The contribution of Bogartte to the field of experimental photography can be already considered of major importance. By combining the different contributions of the photogram, photo-drawing and the so-called “action painting” (by moving rapidly elements under the light) and the “situationist” diversion of the photocopier, a machine which is as practical as it is forbidding, the photomorphosis appears to us as the epitome of the latest research. As such, the fantasy set free by this dream alchemy is considered by us worthy in all respects of participating in the final bouquet of fireworks that “surrealist photography” has been for sixty years.