Surreal Ladies

Shig Ikeda, Tokyo-born photographer, freezes time. Schooled in Japan and at Los Angeles' Art Center College of Design, Ikeda in the works on these pages probes the camera's highestmission: to permanently record an instant in the life of the mind. "To a great extent," he says, "I previsualize my image before I shoot, but it often takes months of work to produce the proper interplay of mood, model and repose to bring forth the penetrating tone of mystery indispensable to surrealist art." Although these photographs vividly evoke the Freudian symbolism of Salvador Dali and René Magritte and the visual poems of Man Ray and Max Ernst, Ikeda does not consciously attempt to recapitulate the work of the surrealist pioneers. "My primary instrument istechique--working with a 4x5 view camera, shooting a section of each frame at a time and masking the remainder." His photos are not retouched but consist instead of multiple exposures perfectly composed on one sheet of film. The dream-instant juxtaposition of the real and the imaginary is a fleeting moment for most of us. But through the lens of Shig Ikeda, the surreal fantansy endures.