Sarah Elise Abramson is a famous photographer from California who shoots in a surrealistic style. She creates unique images of bizarre characters on abandoned objects. Her work acts almost like a connection to the magic in our psyche often lost in our daily routines.

What are surreal arts?

Before we talk about Sarah Elise Abramson's artwork, let us look at what surrealism is and how it manifests itself in various forms of art, including photography.

Surrealist photography, like a surrealist painting, is filled with a strange assemblage of objects. It offers the viewer a journey into the unconscious and irrational. In these works, the authors turn away from reality, turning to their fantasies and dreams, drawing from symbols and translating them into artistic images. Surrealism can be used to depict secret thoughts, fears, desires, unconscious fantasies, memories, and dreams. In this way, the artist can depict a certain higher reality on the canvas which their subconscious prompts them.

The main feature of surrealism besides the unusual combinations of forms is the variability of images and phantasmagoric subjects. The basic idea of surrealism is a narrative from the subconscious, dreams, hypnosis, delusions, hallucinations, and similar states of mind followed by the artist's pencil on the paper

History of the surreal term

Surrealism as a concept originated in France in the early 20th century and literally means "over-realism. They used to take a piece of paper and write words in a column, one by one, rolled up in a tube so no one could see what the neighbor had written. Surrealism was originally born in fiction and art in the 1920s. It is characterized by the use of allusions and paradoxical combinations of forms. Surrealism is considered to have developed over forty years before new movements emerged in the 1960s. The founder of surrealism is considered to be the writer and poet André Breton, author of the first manifesto of surrealism (1924).

Sarah Elise Abramson's bio

Sarah Elise Abramson was born in 1986 in Torrance, California. From a young age, Sara had a passion for photography and took her first photo at the age of 10. Sarah studied photography at the Brooks Institute School of Photography and at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. In addition to magazines, Sarah's work is exhibited in several galleries: SOMarts - San Francisco, The Vex - LA, The Egan Gallery in Fullerton, The Eventi Hotel Big Screen Plaza - NY, as well as one of the most famous galleries in the list - Louvre

Sara is a very open-minded person, openly interested in the art of photography and not afraid to experiment. Sarah's work has been featured in magazines such as Coachella Magazine, Cry Baby Magazine, Beautiful Bizarre, Monster Children, and the Huffington Post. In addition, Sarah is also the editor-in-chief of Slow Toast. She also writes a column for American Art Collector magazine.

Sarah takes a variety of photographs, including portraits of various artists from small to large. But what she loves most is photographing nature and eccentric characters, which has eventually become her photographic signature in art. If you look thoughtfully at Sarah's artwork, you can realize that it is a journey through the mind and soul.

Sarah studied with photographer David LaСhapelle, who she claims inspired her to this genre. They even have a photo shoot together. In addition to her work with David, Sarah also studied photography with Susan Worsham and Taso Papadakis.

Sarah Elise Abramson's ArtWork

Her photographs embody a contemporary aesthetic. By photographing people in unusual surroundings, Sarah reveals a surreal world around us that we usually don't notice. Sara's photographs allow everyday objects to merge with the depth of thought of the human mind. At times her work can shock the viewer, but in doing so she shows us the everyday beauty of nature.

Sometimes Sarah finds abandoned objects in the street and can spontaneously incorporate them into her photographs as props or to accentuate or complement the composition. She also shoots nudes, thereby fighting for the rights and opportunities of women in society. But this is not the whole point of her nude photographs, what she is trying to say is that things must remain things and not hide the natural. Sara often uses cinematographic filters to keep the connection between the viewer and the image.

Sarah makes a series of photographs to push the boundaries of surrealism and to emphasize certain aspects of surreality in this series. One such series is one of her photo shoots called "Parallels" done in a pagan style.

This artwork is intended to show an appreciative love of nature for discarded objects and eccentric characters.

As Abramson says, in the realm of dreams we get a clarification of reality, and it is there that we gain access to our innermost thoughts. And there that reality is as far away from us as the decisions that devour us from the inside. The moment we confuse our dreams with reality is the reason. This series of photographs depicts the time spent in the parallel world of dreams.

According to Sara, she always has very vivid and rich dreams, so vivid that it is difficult to distinguish them from reality. Sometimes after such dreams, she gets an understanding of the whole concept of the upcoming photo shoot. And sometimes she dreams entire movies with characters worked out down to the nuances.

Most human mental activity occurs at a subconscious level, after studying these statistics Sara vowed to always pay attention to what prompts her subconscious and intuition. Sara believes that we already have the answers to most questions, we only learned how to artificially hide them from ourselves, and now we need to learn to do the opposite.

"The real world is harsh and cruel and work is my escape. Photography allows me to create an alternate world so I don't go completely crazy."