Lake, John2009-07-02NO_RESTRIC2009-07-022008http://hdl.handle.net/10179/884This thesis explores the epistemological shift in my photographic practice from an ethnographic position to that of surrealist documentary. In charting this shift I have consider the use of documentary photography by the historical Surrealist movement ,and, the synthesis of surrealism and ethnography found in the English group Mass- Observation. The photograph’s oscillation between indexical record and mystical emanation forms a key position in understanding these two groups belief in the found images ability to describe a repressed reality located in the mass unconscious. Drawing on the Lacanian model of the Real used by Slavoj Zizek as a tool of cultural critique I suggest a new framework for a surrealist documentary practice. In bringing the methodology of the early Surrealists into a contemporary context I consider the position of suburbia as a new terrain vague in relationship to the fantasy of the Real.enThe AuthorDocumentary photographySurrealismReality in artFields of Research::410000 The Arts::410200 Visual Arts and Crafts Studies::410203 Photography studiesThesisQ112877709https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q112877709