ROLAND PENROSE
Roland Penrose, Four Women Asleep (Lee Miller, Adrienne Fidelin, Nusch Eluard, and Leonora Carrington, 1937). Print from color reversal film. © Roland Penrose Estate, England 2020. All rights reserved.
Afterimage by Clare Patrick:
I’m thinking about an image of four women sleeping. It was made in Cornwall in 1937, by Roland Penrose, and I first saw it earlier this year at the Met in New York. I was struck by how it ties into the surrealist fascination with dreaming and with closed eyes. This theme of dreaming has recurred in interesting ways over the past year, particularly now with the major surrealist exhibition here in Paris, for example. It continues to feel relevant.
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of the gaze in photography. This particular image is especially interesting because it involves a refusal of the gaze. Each of the women has her eyes closed, yet their faces are very strategically positioned—almost in a diagonal line, tilted upwards toward the camera. It’s clear they’re aware of being photographed. Of course, it’s a posed image; I don’t believe for a second that they’re actually sleeping.
It’s a very beautiful image, but it’s also a little unnerving. When I think of images that stick with me, they often do so because there’s something about them that troubles me in relation to photographic practice, or because they’re sentimental. Often, when I spend the most time reflecting on a photograph, it’s because the image ties into broader questions I have about the medium—its uses, its ethics, its craft, and the strategies people use to compose an image. This image pokes at questions of viewership, autonomy, and representation. I’m also very interested in the role of femininity within surrealism, and I think this image complicates that idea as well.
The women featured in the image are Lee Miller, Adrienne (Ady) Fidelin, Nusch Eluard, and Leonora Carrington. I’m currently researching Fidelin, and this was the first photograph of her I really encountered. Much of her history and narrative hasn’t yet been recorded, so it’s through photographs that I come to know her. This ongoing exploration of representation, autonomy, viewership, and subjecthood within photography is something I’m deeply interested in.
The image has many layers, particularly in a theoretical sense. As I spend more time with it, I think about the friendships, the intimacy, and the collaboration involved. Photography can be a space for collaboration, where the model or subject is as involved in the creation of the image as the photographer. So much of surrealist photography involves men taking photos of women, and it’s often been assumed that the relationship was one of muse and creator, with little collaboration. I believe it’s far more complex than that. And to start thinking about these relations differently can unearth so many more interesting possibilities.
Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite artists and writers to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue, originally titled Sinnbilde in Norwegian. As the sea of images continues to swell, the series explores which visuals linger and take root in today's endless stream - much like a song that plays on repeat in your head. Whether it's an image glimpsed on a billboard, a portrait in a newspaper, a family photo from an album or an Instagram reel, we're interested in those fleeting moments that stay with you and refuse to let go.