Eli Lotar and Jean Painlevé
Eli Lotar and Jean Painlevé, Rostre de la crevette (Rostrum of a Shrimp). 1929, gelatin silver print. Gift of the Estate of Lester and Betty Guttman, Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 2014.529.
The title of this intricately detailed, microscopic photograph offers the only clue as to the identity of its subject, which flits between the realms of natural history and abstraction with its elegant lines, sinuous curves, and lightly scaled ground. In this way, Eli Lotar and Jean Painlevé’s photograph participates in a wider Surrealist fascination with the strange worlds opened up by scientific media. This image was excerpted from Crabes et Crevettes (Crabs and Shrimp, 1929), a whimsical educational film directed by Painlevé and shot by Lotar, which combined underwater and microscopic cinematography to explore the anatomy and life cycle of crabs and shrimp. It presents a view of the shrimp’s carapace—the hard shell covering its head and back. By privileging line and texture, this photograph complicates the conventional association of microscopic imaging with categorization. Instead, it frames and magnifies its subject as an aesthetic marvel.
— Teagan Harris