From the secondary to the uncanny: Paul Nougé and the photograph as "shocking object"

Abstract

“Subversion of images” is the title given by the Belgian surrealist poet Paul Nougé to a series of photographs shot between the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1930, but published only in 1968. Accompanied by short poems, the photographs present scenes acted both by human beings and objects, mainly tied to everyday actions, that suddenly become something different by opening to the uncanny and to the estrangement. Based on the epiphany of a “minor” reality that becomes a refined enigma with no solution, the essay aims to investigate Nougé’s photographic poetics as well as its close relationships with the art of his friend René Magritte.