The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism
Citation
Krauss, Rosalind. “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism.” October 19 (Winter 1981): 3–34.
Reprinted in: Krauss, Rosalind E. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985 (see src-krauss-1985-originality-avant-garde). NOT consulted in this round.
Relevance
Krauss’s analysis of the photographic index — the trace, the cut, the uncanny — through the lens of Surrealist photography. The essay extends the indexicality argument from “Notes on the Index” (1977, src-krauss-1977-notes-on-index) into the specific practice of Surrealist photographers (Brassaï, Man Ray, Atget) who exploited the photograph’s double nature as document and as uncanny double. The essay bears on The Family of Man by providing the theoretical apparatus for understanding what the Steichen exhibition suppressed: the uncanny, alienating, and politically disruptive dimensions of photographic representation. Where The Family of Man presented photographs as warm, legible documents of universal experience, Krauss’s Surrealist analysis reveals the photograph’s constitutive strangeness — its resistance to the humanist narrative.
October is named in CREDIBILITY.md as a Tier-2 peer-reviewed journal.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): JSTOR URL
https://www.jstor.org/stable/778398— attempted; returned HTTP 403. Full text NOT retrieved. Body text NOT consulted in this round. - Volume, issue, and page range (October vol. 19, Winter 1981, pp. 3–34): carried from standard bibliographic citation in photography-theory secondary literature. The Wikipedia article on Rosalind Krauss (fetched 2026-04-30) identifies “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism” in October, winter 1981, confirming title, journal, and approximate date, but does NOT give volume number or page range.
- Reprinting in Krauss 1985 (Originality of the Avant-Garde): confirmed from Wikipedia (fetched 2026-04-30); specific page range within that volume NOT verified in this round.
- No verbatim passage quoted from a primary fetch in this round.
Notes
- Cross-reference to
src-krauss-1977-notes-on-index(earlier companion essay establishing the indexicality argument). Cross-reference tosrc-krauss-1985-originality-avant-garde(the collection that reprints this essay). - Cross-reference to
src-sekula-1986-body-and-the-archive(parallel archive/body analysis, same year). Cross-reference tosrc-phillips-1982-judgment-seat(institutional analysis in the same journal, one year later). - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995(anchor for Family of Man reception history). - Volume number (19) and page range (pp. 3–34): carried from standard secondary citation in photography-theory literature (these are widely cited in academic bibliographies); NOT verified from a primary fetch in this round. The Wikipedia confirmation of title, journal, and “winter 1981” date partially corroborates.
verified: false: JSTOR returned 403; body text NOT consulted. Volume, issue, and page range carried from standard secondary citation; partially corroborated by Wikipedia (fetched 2026-04-30). A library access in a future session should verify the article.