Les objets

Raoul Ubac

1939 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

In this work, Ubac removes everyday objects—an egg, knife, coin, and cord—from their usual contexts, stripping them of their meaning as items of consumption, utility, or exchange, and assembles them according to his own flexible logic. When Ubac exhibited this photograph with the knife pointing up, he subtitled it “Night Landscape,” but when he displayed the photograph inverted, with the knife pointed down, he called it “Alphabetical Order.” By populating his image with common items surrounded by an eerie glow and giving it changeable subtitles, Ubac demonstrates the associative dream logic of Surrealism.

Artist

Raoul Ubac

Date

1939

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987