In Surrealist circles in early 20th-century Paris, artists explored the sensuality and desire of the subconscious mind. With prominent male artists at the forefront of the movement, the female form came under their gaze. Women’s bodies “became the ultimate surrealist object, it was mystified, fetishized, and othered,” Izabella Scott wrote for Artsy in 2017. The photographers of the Surrealist movement were no exception. Man Ray famously turned Kiki de Montparnasse’s torso into a violin, while André Kertész distorted models to monstrous effect. Women photographers of the era—such as Dora Maar and Lee Miller —have often been reduced to mere muses, their own important practices ignored or overshadowed until being revisited in recent years.
