THE «SYMBOLIC USE OF REALITY»: FEMALE IMAGES IN CLARENCE JOHN LAUGHLIN’S ART

Abstract

In the article, the researcher examined the specifics of the interpretation of female images in the work of the American photographer C. J. Laughlin, who created the original version of photographic Surrealism. In the master’s art, a woman takes on the images of death, war, madness, the ghost of the past, Undine, Lamia, a dangerous lover, a mannequin, and a living statue. In all of them, he varied the Anima archetype in its destructive aspects in one way or another. The author showed that the photographer actualized such Surrealist concepts as the marvelous, the uncanny, the principle of paradoxical juxtapositions, and black humor while interpreting female images. The author concluded that Laughlin was primarily interested in the symbolic interpretation of the female images using them to analyze key problems of the human psyche and events of modern history, unlike European Surrealist photographers.