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<p>Artists continue to test the medium's limits and innovative potential </p>
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Payal Uttam

From Dora Maar to Frida Orupabo: radical photography at Art Basel

<p>Emerging from the shadows, a strange scaly creature with floppy ears hunches forward. Holding its claws up close to its stubby snout, one beady eye gazes out sleepily. The tightly cropped image <em>Père Ubu</em> (1936) – now believed to be an armadillo fetus submerged in formaldehyde – is among the most renowned Surrealist photographs of the 20th century. While the modestly sized monochromatic image, shot by French artist Dora Maar (1907–1997) hardly seems revolutionary today, it shocked audiences in 1936 when it was shown at the ‘International Surrealist Exhibition’ at the New Burlington Galleries in London. Photographic historian Ian Walker says it would have acted like ‘a small, sharp puncture’ in the otherwise exuberant display of more stylized images of the time. Maar’s mysterious subject (she never disclosed what it was) rattled viewers, defying explanation and categorization.</p>

<p>Maar is among several pioneering artists credited with pushing the boundaries of photography whose work will be on view at Art Basel next month. These are figures who have brazenly defied the conventions of the medium either through their choice of subject matter, manipulation of photographic material, or transformation of the process itself.</p>
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While photography was originally seen as an image recorder and a replicator of reality, Surrealists like Maar used the medium to give a voice to the uncanny, grotesque, and unexpected, inspiring a new way of perceiving the world. Maar began as a studio photographer shooting images for fashion houses and magazines before becoming entrenched in Surrealist circles. Her career has long been overshadowed by her association with Pablo Picasso (who considered her a muse), but today her contribution to photography is finally coming to light.</p>
<p>Beyond experimenting with photo collages and pairing unexpected images, Maar also took photographs exposing social inequality, turning her lens on underrepresented individuals like disabled war veterans and working-class laborers. Her work touched a nerve, capturing as it did, a world filled with a sense of displacement and alienation. </p>
<p>In stark contrast to artists like Maar, whose disquieting images pointed to the dark underbelly of society, influential New York street-photographer Jamel Shabazz (b. 1960) has described his work as ‘visual medicine of positive images.’ From the 1980s onward, he has sought to dismantle prevailing negative narratives about African Americans through intimate portraits infused with a sense of dignity and joy. </p>

<p>While photography has long been considered a tool of colonialism and oppression, unfairly denying power and agency to countless people, Shabazz harnessed the medium’s power to act as a witness of his community. He has sought to document authentic scenes of daily life in the streets, ranging from tender moments like a couple kissing in a subway station to kids posing playfully on a park bench, or a woman smiling softly and gazing directly into the camera lens from inside a packed commuter train.  </p>
<p>Shabazz says he often approaches his subject with statements like: ‘I see your greatness, young brother. I’m a photographer, and would you mind me capturing your legacy?’ This not only creates a connection with his subject but also gives them a feeling of acknowledgement and acceptance, something he believes photography has the power to offer.</p>
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<p>Like Shabazz, Norwegian-Nigerian artist <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/46801/Frida-Orupabo" target="_blank">Frida Orupabo</a> (b. 1986) – who participated in the 2019 Venice Biennale – shares a similar interest in shattering stereotypes and breaking away from photographs and tropes that unfairly characterize her community’s experience. She creates sculptural photographic collages often featuring Black women who stare back at the viewer, embodying a sense of refusal or defiance. </p>
<p>A former social worker, she culls images from colonial archives, Pinterest, Google, and other online sources, then enlarges them to assemble life-size paper figures which she pins together in often jarring and sometimes violent compositions. This process of cutting and piecing together new bodies exposes the traumatic legacy of colonialism, sexism, racism, and the ways in which the white gaze has often maimed and dehumanized Black people.</p>
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<p>Orupabo is among many photographers choosing to repurpose archival imagery as well as imagery found online. German photographer <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8075/Thomas-Ruff" target="_blank">Thomas Ruff</a> (b. 1958) – who shot to fame in the 1980s for his monumental passport-style color portraits – has since experimented with everything from NASA imagery of Saturn to generic Internet pornography. He has also explored different photographic methods including equipping a camera with a night-vision enhancer to create ominous nocturnal images of the streets of Düsseldorf during the Gulf War in his<em>
Nacht</em> series (1992-1996). Ruff created these works out of horror at seeing the way in which <em>night-time images from the war were being transmitted in real time to homes in the West.</em> Tinted with a hazy green, the buildings and streetscapes depicted are an uncomfortable reminder of the power of military surveillance.</p>
<p>Most recently, Ruff started making vibrant digital prints on velour carpets in a series titled <em>d.o.p.e.</em>, referencing Aldous Huxley’s book about a mescaline trip called <em>The Doors of Perception</em>
published in 1954. Using a special software program, Ruff creates hallucinogenic images using fractals – a class of complex geometric shapes which can be described as never-ending patterns – conjuring otherworldly, swirling landscapes. </p>
<p>Similar to Ruff and Orupabo, other artists are transforming photography, a traditionally flat medium, by incorporating it into sculptures, installations, and even architecture. British artist <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/17703/Alice-Channer" target="_blank">Alice Channer</a> (b. 1977), known for her process-driven practice and richly textured sculptures, breathes new life into two-dimensional photographs. Her <em>Soft Sediment Deformation (Granite Bodies) </em>(2020), for instance, stems from an ordinary photograph she took of thick folds of granite in a geological site called the Crackington Formation on the coast of North Devon. Channer stretched the image and printed it using a pleating process used in clothing onto a piece of heavy crepe de chine fabric spanning four meters wide. ‘It has glitches, ruptures, stretches all over it, a lot like my own skin. I think that’s an honest surface for a sculpture to have,’ she once said of the undulating surface. Just like Channer’s work, the definition of photography has been stretched and altered; it is constantly being ruptured as artists search for their own truths and reexamine the medium’s complex past.</p>
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<p><br>Payal Uttam is an independent writer and editor who divides her time between Hong Kong and Singapore. She contributes to a range of publications including <em>Artsy</em>, <em>The Art Newspaper</em>, <em>South China Morning Post,</em> and <em>The </em><em>Wall Street Journal</em>.</p>
<p>Published on May 4, 2023.</p>
<p>Caption for full-bleed image: Jamel Shabazz,&nbsp;<em>Rush Hour</em>, NYC, 1988. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Bene Taschen.</p>

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