| FT-270511-20 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Amy J. Lyford | The Photography of French Surrealist Dora Maar (1907-1997) | 9/1/2021 - 10/31/2021 | $6,000.00 | Amy | J. | Lyford | | | | Occidental College | Los Angeles | CA | 90041-3314 | USA | 2020 | Art History and Criticism | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Research and writing leading to a book on the French photographer Dora Maar (1907-1997).
I propose to conduct research on the surrealist photographer Dora Maar, a figure best known as an infrequent participant in surrealist publications of the 1930s, and as a partner of Pablo Picasso who also documented his painting Guernica. Maar’s photographic practice has been little studied to date, and I plan to write a book on her diverse photographic work: inventive portraiture and fashion photography; unsettling collage work; and politically nuanced "street" photography. Her photographs intersect with surrealist forms and methods of production but take on the power and ubiquity of commercial and documentary work; her pictures smuggle surrealism inside those conventional photographic typologies. Maar’s expressive, unflinching approach enabled her to invent a powerful visual critique of how bodies and social spaces might express alternative gender, class, and identity positions in the 1930s. |