Patrick Bailly-Maitre – Les Evasions 2018

Surrealism.  If you want to produce something that is odd and unsettling, just think of surrealism.  Think of shadows, of displaying objects together that have no obvious connection, think of an unsettling atmosphere and surrealism will soon appear.  The connection to the subconscious that we think we know and yet when we are presented with it, it has a sense of relatable alienation or understandable otherness.

I love a bit of surrealism and some of the best photographs I have ever seen have been taken by Bill Brandt, Duane Michals and, of course, Man Ray.  And this photograph by Patrick Bailly-Maitre definitely fits in with those great masters.  The photograph was achieved by originally photographing a portrait and then when it was framed, was photographed again with the reflection of the window. 

The title, Les Evasions translates to The Escapes.  Initially the portrait was of a person sleeping, though I am unsure why the metal marble is placed on the eye.  Could it symbolise the heaviness of a deep sleep?  Or it could be representative of a giant tear?  I feel that I am clutching at straws with trying to decipher the meaning, maybe that is the point, that it is there just to intrigue the viewer and to engage their interest.  Hence part of the fascination with surrealism.

But the reflection of the window and the portrait of a sleeping woman does become understandable.  The window is symbolic of dreaming, a window that we peer through when we are in our slumber and introduced to a world without logic and where separate symbols form a cohesive whole.  In the dream nothing seems out of place, nothing is odd even though everything is strange but cohesive.  Dreams are meant to be insights into our subconscious and it is no mistake that the reflection of the window falls onto the forehead, as if offering a symbolic view into the person’s dream.

To have the face of the woman upside down is a simplistic masterstroke that adds so much.  It has the perspective of oddness, of being unusual but not out of place.  It adds that element of unsettling the viewer, of seeing something familiar differently, but still maintains a sense of peacefulness, of being at rest.  There is the lack of tension in the face, which contrasts so strongly with the metal sphere pressing into her, contrasting the organic with the manufactured.   

Though it is the expression of peace being combined with the reflection of the window that is the finishing touch.  A dream is just a reflection of the subconscious, of the part of ourselves that we use constantly but are unaware of its machinations, the unconscious part of ourselves that makes us who we are.  It highlights how comfortable we are with the self-concealed part of ourselves, a part we can’t see but others can, a part of our human nature that will remain surreal.