Thoughts on the surreal and narrative.

In a time when awful surreal-photography seems to be everywhere, I find Alex Prager's photography to do the style justice. It has another other-wordily quality to it that is accessible yes, but still gentle enough in it's application to be successful (it's worlds apart from the surreal photography that climbs the democratic ladder of sites like Reddit; and that are filled with cliches like clocks, fog, mirrors, and dramatic poses in woodlands. No thanks). It's the 'Compulsion series' that I'm most taken aback by, and in particular this image.

I've found myself becoming increasingly interested in artworks that utilise narrative as a tool. I would say that that Guido van der Werve's "Nummer veertien, home", shown at ACCA recently, also played a big part in expanding my interest in the abilities of narrative. As someone who predominately uses video, I've always had an internal battle between narrative and ambiguity when conceiving my projects (I'm not sure if ambiguity is the right word, but it'll do); I even dedicated half of my exegesis to this topic for honours, and rallied against cinema's invasion into video art. Times have since changed. 

I have an idea for a narrative work that I might try and flesh out this year, which is, come to think of it, surreal in it's nature too. We'll see.
(NB: This is my first post on Blogger after moving over from Tumblr).