Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of surrealism is that it was funny. For all that the eyeball-slicing of Un Chien Andalou and the nightmarish dreamscapes of Salvador Dalí’s paintings are singularly disconcerting, the movement also had an endearingly quirky sense of humor — one that’s echoed in these playfully surrealist black-and-white pictures at Faith is Torment. They evoke the spirit of Man Ray, juxtaposing the mundane and the bizarre in ways that are both striking and amusing: a spoon casts the shadow of a fork, a ladder leads into a mirror, plates sit stacked in the grating that covers a street drain. They’re the work of Spanish photographer Jose Maria Rodriguez Madoz, who goes by the name Chema Madoz. Click through for a selection of his wittiest and most imaginative images.
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz
Photo credit: Chema Madoz