A Surreal Lens: Photography From the Figge Collection

A Surreal Lens: Photography From the Figge Collection
Dec 20, 2025 – Jun 21, 2026

United States United States — Art Museum
225 West Second Street
Davenport, IA 52801

A Surreal Lens invites viewers into a world where photography becomes a bridge between reality and imagination. Since the invention of the medium, artists have resisted the notion of photography as a purely documentary tool, instead transforming it into a language of dreams, memories, and illusions. By experimenting with techniques such as montage, double exposure, retouching, and digital manipulation, these photographers blur the line between what is seen and what is felt, crafting images that question our understanding of truth and perception.

The exhibition gathers artists who use both technical precision and poetic vision to explore the hidden corners of the mind. Whether through staged compositions or post-production transformations, their works evoke the surreal and the uncanny. These photographs may resemble fragments of dreams or echoes of alternate realities, inviting the viewer to step into a dimension where logic bends and emotion reigns. While not all of these artists align directly with Surrealism, they embody its essence—an exploration of the subconscious and a fascination with the beauty of the strange.

Featuring the works of Alan Cohen, György Kepes, Olivia Parker, Kenda North, Michael Stone, Linda Connor, Emmet Gowin, Barbara Morgan, Otmar Thormann, Hans Breder, and others, A Surreal Lens showcases how diverse artistic voices can converge through a shared pursuit of mystery and transformation. Each image reveals the photographer’s hand as both creator and dreamer, manipulating light and time to build impossible worlds that feel intimately familiar.

Through this collective vision, the exhibition challenges viewers to reconsider what a photograph can be—not merely a mirror of reality, but a portal into imagination itself. Here, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the camera becomes a tool not for recording the world, but for reimagining it.

Image: Michael Stone (American, born 1945), Whitehouse Products, 2015, archival pigment print on hahnemuhle photo rag paper, 8 x 12 inches, Gift of the artist, 2016.32.2


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