Sueño No. 1: "Articulos eléctricos para el hogar"

Grete Stern

1949 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

In 1948 the Argentine women’s magazine Idilio introduced a weekly column called “Psychoanalysis Will Help You,” which invited readers to submit their dreams for analysis. Each week, one dream was illustrated with a photomontage by Stern, a Bauhaus-trained photographer and graphic designer who fled Berlin for Buenos Aires when the Nazis came to power. Over three years, Stern created 140 photomontages for the magazine, translating the unconscious fears and desires of its predominantly female readership into clever, compelling images. Here, a masculine hand swoops in to “turn on” a lamp whose base is a tiny, elegantly dressed woman. Rarely has female objectification been so erotically and electrically charged.

Artist

Grete Stern

Date

1949

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2012